What does /n/ think of this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway
>>951202
Dump incoming
>>951203
>>951202
Pretty good idea actually. Cheaper than tram or light rail, with similar efficiency.
Kind of neat, but I prefer rails desu.
>>951223
>cheaper
>it's practically the same infrastructure
>similar efficiency
>needing 4 to 5 as many buses to offer the same capacity as LRT
Literally fucking disgusting, and the people responsible should be arrested.
They took an established railway trackbed and destroyed it with a shitty bus route that can only be used by pants-on-head-retarded guided buses. It took nearly ten years and an hilarious series of fuck ups including poor construction and flooding and they've been left with a system that cost a huge amount of cash but a) isn't a light railway and b) doesn't relieve traffic on the main road at all because only guided buses can use it.
What a fucking disaster.
Frankly any other option would have been better than what they chose. Guided busways are a total waste of time; the worst of all worlds. I can only assume bribes were involved.
No transfers between a fast busway and dense local lines is always a good thing desu.
Is that system of concrete guidance rails patented in some way like those french systems with one central guidance rail?
Scrap it and make it a proper tram/lightrail.
>>951446
This
>>951282
DAMN STRAIGHT! BAN PUBLIC TRANSPORT NOW!
>>951455
ebin strawman faggot
taking a brake from spamming le downtube forced meme cancer?
![cambridge-busway-crash-1456162371-large-article-0[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/TikVGgN.jpg "cambridge-busway-crash-1456162371-large-article-0[1].jpg")
Camfag here.
Never been on the guided busway, but the path/cycle track beside it is fantastic. Really popular with cyclists here.
Super smooth, ~40km return route.
Actually rode on it yesterday, twice.
Not sure how widespread this made it in the news, but one of the drivers crashed a bus on it fairly recently. It sounds as though it was intentional, as both the track and vehicle were cleared as having no faults.
He was fired. Pic related.
>>951282
Pretty sure the railway track hadn't been used in my lifetime... possibly not in yours.
>>951446
The buses come off the guided parts and use normal roads and bus lanes to get into the city. Just wouldn't work as light rail.
>>951473
>Pretty sure the railway track hadn't been used in my lifetime... possibly not in yours.
It was a freight only line until 1992.
I'm not suggesting they could have just plonked trains down on the old line, but they could and should have relaid it as a light railway, rather than wasting millions pouring concrete as part of the most idiotic form of public transport: the guided busway.
Guided busways have NEVER been a good idea. Light rail was ALWAYS a better option, and more importantly because of the epic mismanagement and terrible construction would have been *cheaper* than the guided busway.
>>951473
>The buses come off the guided parts and use normal roads and bus lanes to get into the city. Just wouldn't work as light rail.
>le trams hold up traffic maymay
sure is 1950's in here
>>951223
Busways and BRT trade off low capital expenses for higher maintenance and labor costs.
They're a good idea in places where labor is cheap, like Brazil and Mexico, but usually pant-on-head retarded in capital-rich nations like the US and Britain where labor is the primary recurring cost.
On top of that, the main reason for high construction costs in the Anglosphere is regulatory hurdles in and around urban areas rather than anything related to the actual transportation technology. This means that any new construction is going to be delayed and overbudget once it overcomes all the requisite lawsuits and environmental impact studies, so it makes sense to go for the fastest and highest capacity technology suitable to the route. That generally isn't a dedicated bus right of way.
>>951529
It's dumb, but at least preferable to making it into a recreational bike path like we do in America.
Seattle does this better: light rail and buses that use the same tunnels. Pic related.
>>951554
He didn't even say that. A light rail with the same coverage as the current bus solution would mean laying tracks inside Cambridge. While not impossible, that would certainly be more difficult and require more lenghty planning than in some small black forest village (>>951446) that already had all car traffic relocated in a tunnel.
From the cost perspective though, I can see that a new short line inside Cambridge would probably have been comparable to converting the entire exisiting rail part to busway.
>>951647
This is when it was a tunnel with dual-mode buses. The tunnel with buses and trains is great but people all pay at the door with the buses so sharing the tunnel often leads to train delays.
>>951792
I'm just speculating, but it might have something to do with different legal traditions, and a corresponding cultural difference in propensity to use lawsuits to delay or extort major government projects. Most English-speaking countries derive their legal procedures from English Common Law, while other countries have a more clearly defined system of civil law. France, for example, follows a legal tradition based on Napoleonic law (as does the American state of Louisiana, to a certain extent), and I'd imagine other former imperial states like Spain and Japan also have a less ad-hoc legal system than the Anglo nations.
>>951473
Very strange. Why would they sack the driver? Any incident to do with rail gets a full investigation and report for the public, this just gets Stagecoach sacking someone with nothing more said. I am very, very interested in what happened and do not believe for one moment that the driver was fully to blame. Why was it possible to do this?
![_88835808_bus1_comp[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Mr0VPqY.jpg "_88835808_bus1_comp[1].jpg")
>>952183
Ah, they have since released images and an explanation of the crash.
He was doing 53mph in a 30mph zone at a point where you join the guided part of the busway. A part where you have to be careful to line up the bus.
Wasn't aware they had released this info when I made my last post.
>>951659
Pretty much this.
Digging up Cambridge just isn't happening, the roads are supper narrow, often one way and there are buses, taxis and bikes *everywhere*.
>>952376
There is also a 26 page official report
>>951202
>all the disadvantages of a road-going bus
>all the disadvantages of a fixed line
>advantages???
Yep, only a politician could've thought this was smart.
>>952386
The advantage is you can get a kickback from the construction company.
>>952411
Someone on the board of the guided busway transit authority has a shop that sells bus parts.
>>952674
Colour me fucking shocked.
>>951203
>>951204
This used to be my actual bus stop for a long time. I used the service from when it opened for a few years until I moved away. Significantly better than the traditional buses servicing the villages. Faster, smoother, nicer buses (onboard power and wifi). I'm a fan, but it definitely cost far more than it needed to.
>>952752
Was there flawless level boarding so that you could wheel a wheelchair on?
>>951282
Should've made it guided trolleys.
>>951473
>The buses come off the guided parts and use normal roads and bus lanes to get into the city.
Why not making a regular road for regular buses, tho?
>>953017
Because cagers can't be made to stay the fuck out of bus lanes without complicated and expensive equipment that also slows down bus passage. They're animals realy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X34Pg9kI8lw
>>953017
Because they're trying to fit buses onto a rail right-of-way and loading gauge. The buses fit, but without the guideway you'd have drivers smashing into bridge supports constantly.
>>952376
>Pretty much this.
>Digging up Cambridge just isn't happening, the roads are supper narrow, often one way and there are buses, taxis and bikes *everywhere*.
In a very exceptional situation where there's really no way for light rail to get good coverage without a tunnel yet the city is too small to generate more demand than a bus could manage AND you have sparse but ongoing urban areas where you'd need a fast grade-separated transport, then it would make sense.
Still gay af tho
>>951482
Yeah, sure, for a similar amount of money they could've made a light railway that connected a number of small towns to...nothing in particular, or they could've spent considerably more to make the thing actually go to Cambridge, to make a system with no particular advantages over what they built.
>>952984
Bus could adjust height pneumatically/hydraulically to be level with platform if required. There was also a ramp that could fold out from the floor by the door that I saw used a few times.
>>953067
You don't need a hardcore guided bus system just to make buses move within low tolerances at select points.
You need curbs. Sure, you might need to slow down for the curbs to be gentle. Just place stops beside these points and it has very little impact to running time. Chances are bridges are places where you want passenger access anyway.
>>953327
It's not a "hardcore guided bus system". It's curbs, and buses with a simple mechanism to follow curbs. I don't think the system would've been much cheaper as a standard busway, and you get a nice smooth ride out of it.
Transgender: the Ride.
>>953503
kek
>>951202
More bus pics
>>953652
>>953653
>inside the bus
>>953063
Fuckin LEL.
Them god damned cagers. But yeah, it those guided buses merge into regular traffic later on, it could be problematic to have a regular road dedicated for them like that.
Maybe some speed cams recording cages and fining them a ridiculous amount of money? Or maybe an internalized "at the root" education to make people realise that faster bus transport is beneficial to both the passengers and drivers (less congestion, since less of their stupid asses are being held up in cars blocking the fucking roads).
I mean, this ain't America.
>>953994
bump
