| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Reply | |
| Posted by: | Ed Saper | |
| Date/Time: | 21/05/22 20:03:00 |
| "Wouldn’t a well designed, camera controlled bus lane, the complete length of the high street reduce traffic as much as the cycle lane." My assumption is that priority bus routes would help to improve bus reliability and encourage more people to use public transport. It is worth pointing out that buses are less reliable and slower than they could be due to the volume of traffic - even increasing bus lanes won't remove pinch points because you can't put a bus lane everywhere. However, as the epic battles of the cycle lane have shown, reconfiguring the road to take space away from other vehicles is difficult. For instance, Fisher's Lane is a priority bus route, it improves bus reliability, has reduced traffic on previously congested roads, is unsuitable for two-way traffic, but there is still a campaign to allow cars through it again. The A4 had bus lanes and they were removed. Not because they didn't work - they did, reducing rush hour journey times for both buses and cars - but because of a campaign by drivers. Bus use is declining both by vehicle and passenger miles across the UK: bus passenger miles of circa 45bn was fairly constant from 1980 to 2010 and declined to 33bn or by 25% in 2019. In London, bikes overtook buses in vehicle miles in 2014 and by 2020 were over 150% higher (bikes: 589m miles vs buses 229m miles). Both buses and bikes are efficient ways of transporting large numbers of people - both have a maximum capacity of around 10,000 passengers / cyclists per hour per lane - although the cycle lane would be two-way, you'd need an extra lane for two-way buses and a lot more buses to hit capacity, which could end up causing congestion when you run out of bus lane. So there's a good argument for increasing provision of both bus lanes and cycle lanes - not at the expense of each, but replacing vehicle lanes. And in places, you may find that bus routes (without lots of buses and cabs) will help encourage more cyclists anyway, like in Fishers Lane. |