"Stephen Richards" wrote in message
...

Couldn't that be done by making a completely separate bus lane,
separated from other traffic by kerbs? This would deliver the
reliability and speed benefits at a fraction of the cost, and allow
similar schemes to be rolled out to other parts of London as well.

Living in a town where they are setting up just such a system now, I
wouldn't recommend it.

Crawley has been in a state of utter chaos for three years now with the set
up of a guided bus system (Fastway) and it looks like going on for at least
another three.

Once fully operational it will serve a minute fraction of the population at
a huge cost.

Not nice if you live here.

"Henry" wrote in message
...

Crawley has been in a state of utter chaos for three years
now with the set up of a guided bus system (Fastway)
and it looks like going on for at least another three.

Once fully operational it will serve a minute fraction
of the population at a huge cost.

Since its purpose is to get workers to Gatwick reliably, and the majority of
the population in that part of the world work in Gatwick, that is hardly a
minute fraction of the population.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

"John Rowland" wrote in message
...
"Henry" wrote in message
...

Crawley has been in a state of utter chaos for three years
now with the set up of a guided bus system (Fastway)
and it looks like going on for at least another three.

Once fully operational it will serve a minute fraction
of the population at a huge cost.

Since its purpose is to get workers to Gatwick reliably, and the majority
of
the population in that part of the world work in Gatwick, that is hardly a
minute fraction of the population.


That's the nice theory.

In practice it starts in one estate (almost as far from Gatwick as you can
get), passes through another and the rest is over busy roads with no local
population.

Everyone else is stuck with 6 years of chaos and when its finished narrower
roads than they started out with.

In article , John Rowland
writes
I would imagine that the cost of the rails is a small fraction of the
project cost, so your bus lanes would be nearly as expensive as the tram
line.

The cost of the rails themselves might be quite low, but there's a major
cost in diverting all services (phone, gas, water, etc.) from out of the
line of route. A bus lane doesn't have this problem, because you just
divert the buses into traffic when you need to dig up the lane.

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

In article , Arthur Figgis
] writes
There is one in Ottawa, with a dedicated busway from the city centre
to the out-of-town railway station (and beyond, but I didn't venture
further).

I used it the other day to get to and from the airport. And, yes, I was
quite impressed by the operation - it didn't have any traffic problems
and it was run like a separate tramway. The buses are multi-part artics.

The service was well patronised for much of its length when I used it
and it was cheap.

The buses are trying to be trams, but the dedicated roads
are wider than a tramway would be. They run on normal roads in the
centre.

This is very true. There's room for one vehicle to pass another in each
direction (it's a dual carriageway).

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

In article ,
Tom Anderson writes
basically, a bus that looks
like a tram; what Clive calls Rapid Transit on Rubber Tyres),

Two notes:

(1) The term RToRT refers to a *trolleybus* that behaves like a tram.
(2) It's not my term originally - I picked it up at a TfL presentation.

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004, Clive D. W. Feather wrote:

In article ,
Tom Anderson writes

basically, a bus that looks
like a tram; what Clive calls Rapid Transit on Rubber Tyres),

Two notes:

(1) The term RToRT refers to a *trolleybus* that behaves like a tram.
(2) It's not my term originally - I picked it up at a TfL presentation.

Apologies.

I shall coin the almost indistinguishable term RT-RT to refer to
super-buses, and then hope that someone in the relevant ministry gets them
confused with AT-ATs, and that all our congestion problems are thereby
solved.

tom

--
3118110161 Pies

In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:

Apologies.

I shall coin the almost indistinguishable term RT-RT to refer to
super-buses,

Is that like two RTs with a hinge connecting them ?

and then hope that someone in the relevant ministry gets them
confused with AT-ATs, and that all our congestion problems are thereby
solved.

I didn't know AT-ATs had open rear platforms ;-)

Nick
--
"And we will be restoring neurotypicality just as soon as we are sure
what is normal anyway. Thank you". -- not quite DNA

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004 18:35:01 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

I shall coin the almost indistinguishable term RT-RT to refer to
super-buses, and then hope that someone in the relevant ministry gets them
confused with AT-ATs, and that all our congestion problems are thereby
solved.



I think the term used for such a bus system (certainly in the US) is
BRT, or Bus(-based) Rapid Transit.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004, Nick Leverton wrote:

In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:

I shall coin the almost indistinguishable term RT-RT to refer to
super-buses, and then hope that someone in the relevant ministry gets
them confused with AT-ATs, and that all our congestion problems are
thereby solved.

I didn't know AT-ATs had open rear platforms ;-)



However, they do have quite spacious side doors, and, as indicated in this
TfL publicity shot, they have a unique new method of dropping off
passengers while on the move:

http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/lt-at-at.jpg

Initial tests of the Mercedes-Benz AT-AT G, however, have been less than
successful:

http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/lt-at-at-g.jpg

tom

--
And he talked about the future, underneath a giant sphere