Glad you leaned on the boarding procedure & bus layout. You're right, those are rarely unpacked by transit planners & advocates. A few years ago I was helping a company develop a mobility-as-a-service platform, and was stunned by the basic human factors that were slowing down the buses.
It seems like contraflow lanes are a very low hanging fruit in areas with one-way roads. But for the standard 5-lane bidirectional arterial, is there anything similar?
At least in Seattle, the solution is either cheap curbside bus lanes shared with turning traffic or a federally-funded and expensive 'BRT' project with center running lanes that takes forever.
Looking at the key street in the example (Andrea Costa) it looks like there's a westbound counterflow bus lane, but then heading eastbound, the bus route (14?) would be in the general purpose lane.
Is that a problem for reliability and bunching (eg everything goes fine westbound, but then 14 hits the turnaround at the west terminus and heads back east and gets stuck in traffic)?
Does the Andrea Costa/14 example mean that service is great (fast) in the PM peak (assuming that it's heading westbound out of the city centre and that's the predominant PM peak flow, perhaps that's not the case) but then service is lousy in the AM peak, when the eastbound bus is stuck in the general purpose lane?
Great piece; so many small things to improve and so much that can be done even with very small right-of-way. Another example of the potential benefits/flexibility of the one-way streets that north american urbanists hate on so much.
In Oakland, recently some bus stops on line 6 got bulb-outs, but they're not level-boarding because they're at sidewalk level (therefore shorter than the bus level).
I believe they didn't raise them to bus height because that would require a ramp for accessibility, which requires laying more concrete / taking away more parking space.
How are accessible level-boarding bulb-outs implemented in Bologna/Vienna/Zurich? Are sidewalks higher in those cities?
That's the case for the camera-assisted approach to platform which provide level gapp-less boarding similar to what low-floor tramways can provide. For regular bus, the ramp still needs to be deployed.
That's the approach switzerland has chosen, pretty much all urban bus stops and aome rural ones had to be raised to floor level and have curb guiding stop the buses at the precise emplacement.
The accessibility law was voted in 2003 and had a 20 years delay for implementation, so of course transit agencies only started implementing that in 2019, panicking because there wasn't enough time left
So for buses equipped with the 'camera-assisted approach to platform', ramps do not need to be deployed? Would be a huge benefit to speed for front-boarding buses.
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Truly an amazingly well written piece. Would be happy to support this financially to keep getting these awesome insights.
Glad you leaned on the boarding procedure & bus layout. You're right, those are rarely unpacked by transit planners & advocates. A few years ago I was helping a company develop a mobility-as-a-service platform, and was stunned by the basic human factors that were slowing down the buses.
It seems like contraflow lanes are a very low hanging fruit in areas with one-way roads. But for the standard 5-lane bidirectional arterial, is there anything similar?
At least in Seattle, the solution is either cheap curbside bus lanes shared with turning traffic or a federally-funded and expensive 'BRT' project with center running lanes that takes forever.
Hi Marco,
Looking at the key street in the example (Andrea Costa) it looks like there's a westbound counterflow bus lane, but then heading eastbound, the bus route (14?) would be in the general purpose lane.
Is that a problem for reliability and bunching (eg everything goes fine westbound, but then 14 hits the turnaround at the west terminus and heads back east and gets stuck in traffic)?
Does the Andrea Costa/14 example mean that service is great (fast) in the PM peak (assuming that it's heading westbound out of the city centre and that's the predominant PM peak flow, perhaps that's not the case) but then service is lousy in the AM peak, when the eastbound bus is stuck in the general purpose lane?
Great piece; so many small things to improve and so much that can be done even with very small right-of-way. Another example of the potential benefits/flexibility of the one-way streets that north american urbanists hate on so much.
In Oakland, recently some bus stops on line 6 got bulb-outs, but they're not level-boarding because they're at sidewalk level (therefore shorter than the bus level).
I believe they didn't raise them to bus height because that would require a ramp for accessibility, which requires laying more concrete / taking away more parking space.
How are accessible level-boarding bulb-outs implemented in Bologna/Vienna/Zurich? Are sidewalks higher in those cities?
(non-level-boarding bumpout: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8295195,-122.264407,3a,75y,312.39h,86.54t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1siCFYb5olskQE1u3cJi2JcQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i29
BRT accessible, level-boarding, Kassel kerb station: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8026975,-122.2714127,3a,75y,23.38h,94.03t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1sK4CGGTEXCrnINRyq3sqYJg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i29)
Sidewalks are generally between 15-20 cm high in Italy. Level boarding for bus/trams starts at 27 cm IIRC. The gap is mediated with very minimal ramp. You can see one example here: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.4845525,11.3719947,3a,39.6y,184.32h,83.39t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s53UuvOZ92xgMzsoDAxm2yQ!2e0!5s20200801T000000!7i16384!8i8192
Does 'level boarding' mean that the wheelchair ramp doesn't ever need to be used?
That's the case for the camera-assisted approach to platform which provide level gapp-less boarding similar to what low-floor tramways can provide. For regular bus, the ramp still needs to be deployed.
I wonder if you could achieve the same with curb-guided buses (Like Cambridge, or Adelaide, but only at bus stops).
Not sure how the cost balances ("electronics before concrete", and all that), but it could be worth considering.
That's the approach switzerland has chosen, pretty much all urban bus stops and aome rural ones had to be raised to floor level and have curb guiding stop the buses at the precise emplacement.
The accessibility law was voted in 2003 and had a 20 years delay for implementation, so of course transit agencies only started implementing that in 2019, panicking because there wasn't enough time left
So for buses equipped with the 'camera-assisted approach to platform', ramps do not need to be deployed? Would be a huge benefit to speed for front-boarding buses.