Buses are Stupid
There's got to be a better way of getting around Sydney than the
current bus system.
I know, I know, I tend to harp on about how good the trams are in
Melbourne and Basel. But honestly - the public transport situation in
both those cities is many orders of magnitude better than it is in
Sydney. And they both have trams, whereas Sydney has buses. Is there
really no correlation? (or causation? or whatever the right term might be?)
Trams are longer, wider, they hold more people, they don't have massive
big engines taking up space, they have more doors, people get on and off
more quickly, and you can't buy tickets from the driver, so the whole
tram isn't held up while little old ladies pay in 5c pieces.
Sure, they're more unwieldy, but they also can't do unexpected things
like throw themselves across three lanes of traffic at a moment's notice and just expect everyone to get out of their way.
Sure, it takes more infrastructure to support trams that it does buses.
But that infrastructure means they're cleaner (i.e. no diesel fumes),
greener (potentially - depending on the source of electricity), and
don't have to carry around large engines.
What have I missed? Why are buses better than trams? Why do we have buses and not trams?
posted by Escheresque at 5:15 pm
5 Comments:
Diesel? All the newer sydney buses use natural gas.
Just a guess - sending busses to a suburb that don't have any yet involves a minister directing his bureaucracy to change timetables. Sending trams to a suburb requires significant amounts of infrastructure - enough that it probably won't happen before the next election.
I think that one thing you missed is that trams, for the most part, don't share infrastructure with roads, and thus don't get held up by traffic. There are parts of melbourne where trams share the road, but the legislation ensures that the cars are required to get out of the way.
It's quite possible that busses, with sufficient protection from traffic, can be a much better solution than they are now. An example - next time you're in brisbane, check out the thingo-whatsit busway. There's been a huge stretch of tunnels and new roads created, they have no traffic lights, no crossroads, and they cut straight through places where roads didn't used to go - and they're only accessible to busses - they mean that a trip that takes 30-45 minutes in a car takes only 15 minutes in a bus.
I've never seen a tram that *doesn't* share the road with other traffic in Melbourne.
I appreciate that getting public transport to places that don't have it yet is going to involve buses. But in high-volume areas where the need for public transport is well known and has been for a hundred or more years, not putting in the best solution seems to me to be short sighted in the extreme.
Another thing about Sydney buses: they're not only dirty, crowded, slow and hard to get on and off of, they also leak. Take it from me.
not putting in the best solution seems to me to be short sighted in the extreme
You really expect politicians to look past the next election?
I don't think we've had many of that calibre of politician lately..
I've never seen a tram that *doesn't* share the road with other traffic in Melbourne.
Depends what you mean by "Share the road". Around the city, they're in dedicated lanes and not competing with cars. They do compete at intersections, but not to the degree that busses do.
Further out, they do sometimes share lanes with cars, but they have other protections - eg, it's illegal for a car to impede the progress of a tram, it's illegal for a car to overtake a tram that it's sharing a lane with. Well, that's my understanding anyway, but maybe the locals who told me that were just fooling the tourist...
How's work going?
In Melbourne? I haven't seen any dedicated tram lanes, but perhaps I haven't been looking hard enough. I've also never tried driving there.
It's illegal for a car to overtake a tram when it's stopped (because people are getting on and off it), but I thought they were allowed to drive alongside it when its doors are closed.
Meh. Listen to us: two Sydneysiders crapping on about how trams work in traffic, when neither of us really knows. It seems to work, somehow, and if they can do it, so can we. That's my point.
I haven't got the first clue how to do what they want me to do at work. It's a bit daunting, actually.
The one tram line in Sydney works quite well... but again, it's because it doesn't share with any other traffic.
It sounds like the one (two?) dedicated busways we have in sydney (paramatta->liverpool or somewhere down there, and one in the north-west somewhere that may or may not be operating yet - listen to me drivel) aren't working very well because they don't have enough busses to satisfy demand...
Post a Comment
<< Home