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36 Reasons Streetcars Are Better Than Buses

From LightRailNow!:

brb-bus-brt-pax-bdg-lg-queue-outbd-buses-at-stn-2007jan-133x_Karl-Fjellstrom_ITDP.jpg

One reason for the high cost of busways is the need for passing lanes at stations to enable capacity approaching that of rail – but high ridership results in serious queuing of buses. Imagine your waiting time if you're trying to catch your bus home after work, but it's somewhere in that "conga line" of "BRT" buses trying to access the station!
[Photo: Karl Fjellstrom, ITDP]

Brisbane Reality Check:
The high cost of "cheap" busways

In the ongoing battle between backers of light rail transit (LRT) and the rather blurry concept dubbed "bus rapid transit" ("BRT" ), Brisbane (capital of Queensland, and Australia's third-largest ciry, on the country's eastern coast) is definitely one of the hottest flashpoints, with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh touting "BRT" busways as costing about half as much to build as LRT, and Transport Minister John Mickel advancing the merits of a "tramway-style" LRT system.

First, some background on Brisbane's public transport system...

The city's pervasive and efficient light rail electric tramway (streetcar) network was scrapped in the 1960s during the worldwide Transit Devastation era (when most city officials and planners were doing all they could to "motorize" their local travel and promote public dependency on personal motor vehicles running on public roadways).

In this process, as the electric tramways were ripped out, they were replaced by motor buses running on petroleum fuel (believed to be forever cheap and abundant). Fortunately, Brisbane's legacy regional passenger rail (RPR) transit system relained, to evolve into today's efficient Citytrain system, reaching some 382 km (237 miles) of route throughout the metro area.

In recent years, the need for a more rapid, medium-capacity surface transit system has sparked a debate between advocates of light rail transit (LRT) – basically, a re-introduction of tramways – and "BRT", operating on both dedicated busways and streets. In 2000, "BRT" won the initial round, with the opening of the first of the region's busways. Now 19.3 km (12 miles) of busway serve the Brisbane metro area, carrying some 100,000 weekday rider-trips. Promoters are claiming supposedly lower costs and greater "flexibility" as reasons to favor more "BRT" development rather than a light rail transit (LRT) system, proposed as an alternative by rail advocates.

In Brisbane as elsewhere, proponents of "BRT" typically mix-and-match design criteria and lowball investment estimates in their campaign to assert that "BRT" is "just like light rail, but cheaper"

The claim that busways are "cheaper" than light rail merits examining with considerable skepticism – as Light Rail Now has done repeatedly, in numerous articles on this website.

In terms of capital investment cost, our research of Brisbane's busway projects hardly justify the claim of "low cost" compared with LRT.

Obtaining the costs of Brisbane's busway projects is not particularly easy – the public agencies involved don't publicize them to facilitate access. However, the following two documents (recently available) have proven to be an extremely helpful source of basic information needed:

• Public Transport Mode Selection: A Review of International Practice
http://etcproceedings.org/paper/download/1679

• State of Queensland (Queensland Transport) 2009 — Busways
http://www.transport.qld.gov.au/Home/Projects_and_initiatives/Projects/Busways/Busways

Splicing together data from these two sources, we've been able to ascertain the actual cost, converted to current (2009) US dollars, of several of Brisbane's major busway projects, as follows:

• South East Busway (completed 2001):
15,6 km (9.7 mi), US$421 million
$27 million/km
$43 million/mile

• Inner Northern Busway (completed 2008):
4.7 km (2.9 mi), US$408 million
$87 million/km
$141 million/mile

• Northern Busway Project (currently under way):
1.2 km (0.7 mile), US$158 million
$132 million/km
$214 million/mile

These unit capital costs seem staggering, and it leaves little wonder why they are not more readily publicized by the authorities and "BRT" promoters.

These costs are particularly striking in comparison with the costs of LRT lines on exclusive rights-of-way (comparable to busways). There is no project in Ausralia in such an alignment (the Adelaide LRT was an upgrade of an existing railway alignment), but two projects in US urban areas could be considered comparable:

• Charlotte — Lynx LRT, South corridor (completed 2007):
9.6 mi (15.5 km), US$496 million
$32 million/km
$52 million/mile

• Sacramento — Folsom LRT extension (completed 2004):
7.4 mi (11.9 km)
$25 million/km
$41 million/mile

(Again, all costs above expressed in 2009 US dollars.)

These comparative costs would certainly seem to call into strong question the claim of "BRT" promoters – in Brisbane and elsewhere – that busways are significantly "lower-cost" investments than LRT lines.
Click to expand...
 
LRT+TTC.jpg


At least buses can pass.
 
Brisbane busway system is probably mostly grade-separated and the LRTs compared to it probably are not. Funny how the article fails to mention that. Typical LRT fanboyism.

Sacramento and Charlotte probably have much lower transit ridership than Brisbane too.
 
The Inner Northern Busway has a bus tunnel and underground stations... try and do that with LRT and you'll get $4.6 billion streetcars
 
Brisbane is the only city I've been where buses are really taken seriously. I was amazed at how many bridges and streets were bus only.
 
This is pretty much exactly why people shouldn't quote crap from "LightRailNow!."

Lets look at where the two LRT examples run. First up, Historic Folsom outside of Sacramento (of Folsom Blues fame):
3291628747_904f75ce4b.jpg
3291569431_0e43a4a693.jpg
3412835825_52501e332e.jpg

If the photos don't make it quite clear, the extension isn't even double tracked outside of the stations and it runs through a podunk town. I'm pretty sure the Forest Hill bus route is busier. Headways, min. 30mins during peak hours and not even running after dark. All bow to the mythical LRT cost saving!

I would also recommend people actually go to live maps and take a bird's eye view of the CATS LYNX system. Outside of a km or two running downtown, the entire route is either in a highway ROW or going through vacant industrial land. The average stop spacing is over 1km. That's not an exaggeration. For an American transit system, it's headways aren't actually that bad at 10 minutes during the day. 20m when dark. I actually like the LYNX system it is a neat case study. Point being, you only get the cost savings with LRT when you operate it with a.) limited stops (~1km apart), b.)fairly long headways outside of rush hour c.) routes that run through empty right of ways to minimize stopping/land acquisition. Basically they are just miniaturized GO trains.

The first thing to note with the Brisbane busways is that they aren't actually rapid transit routes per se, but short (>5km) bypasses into the CBD. If nothing else, the shorter route distances automatically entail relatively higher p/km costs. The one busway LRNow! listed (the S.E. Busway) which runs any significant distance is cheaper than the comparable LRT systems to start with. There is really no comparison, whatsoever, between a 5km underground busway through a CBD which, at it's peak, carries 32 bus routes and integrates with a 10 platform commuter rail station and some dinky single tracked toy train in Folsom. I might as well bring in the Space Shuttle.
 
MisterF said:
It wouldn't need to be to offer the same capacity.
Click to expand...

This is a somewhat unchallenged view. I can't help but ask what is so great about capacity? That sounds dumb at first glance, and its not like I don't get why serving high demand routes with high capacity systems is a good idea. Capacity in and of itself though just seems a bit myopic. Taking the same argument ad infinitum, shouldn't we all travel via some kind of quadruple decked, 20m wide, 12 car trains carrying many thousands of passengers?

Looking at a more real world example, lets use LightRailNow's Folsom extension of the Sacramento LRT. I have no doubt that the system has a higher capacity than a bus route running along the same path. By itself that is probably a good thing, but it doesn't really help the transit system much. The end result is that the vehicles end up moving in 30minute headway's so as to have a decent utilization rate. If the transit operator had operated a lower capacity platform, headways could be shrunk thereby speeding up the system. Its not even a one off type of phenomenon. The US is full of LRT systems which, despite slashing neighboring bus routes to funnel ridership, end up with totally normal bus-range ridership, but with 15-20 minute headways. Scarberian has offered pretty convincing arguments that the higher capacity Sheppard East LRT will end up increasing average travel times for most of the route's riders through higher headways negating potential speed hikes.

Just to make sure no one interprets this as "capacity isn't important," I think capacity is important, just not the only thing that matters. Certainly less important than the both the cost and speed of a system. If we opt for higher capacity, implicitly raising headways, it could very well have the perverse effect of in some cases raising trip times (the single biggest determinant of transit utilization). In most cases buses aren't quite at this stage and we have yet to try any number of low cost capacity boosters (artics, double deckers, so on and so on) anyways.
 
Artics have been tried by TTC in the past, but had quality issues. That aside, articulated buses can work on some TTC routes, but others will present a physics nightmare. Double deckers won't handle many of our bridges, or bus terminals.
 
It wouldn't need to be to offer the same capacity.
Click to expand...

The real reason for bus bypass lanes and triple or quadruple tracking is not capacity, it is to be able to provide combined local and express service. That's the reason the Mississauga Transitway will have bypass lanes and I assume that's why the Brisbane transitway system has them too.
 
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