If you have spent the last couple of months trapped in a well, you may be unaware that there is a great deal of disquiet in Bristol (and Bath) over plans to turn a section of the Bristol and Bath Railway path into a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route. The online petition opposing this plan now has almost nine thousand signatures.
BRTs are a compromise solution for mass transit, not quite a bus, and not quite a light rail system. There are a variety of different sub-types but in general the key attributes are:
- A rubber-tyred self-propelling vehicle
- A defined route that is exclusively a right-of-way for the BRT vehicle, or at least predominately separated from other traffic.
Or, in less technical terms, it's a posh bus that can drive on normal roads but also drive on a special concrete tray without having to sit in queues of traffic.
The proposals put forward by the West of England Development Partnership (WoE) are still at the pastel drawings stage, with a request for funding from central government due to be made in September 2008. Interestingly, the BRT page at WoE says "This page is currently being updated", and has said so for some time. (Some commentators reckon that decisions have already been made.)
Mass Transit vs Public Transport
I'm a big fan of mass transit, but I'm always rather sceptical of public transport. Sadly, it's very difficult to procure the former without it turning into the latter. Historically, without some sort of market signal to guide the builders of mass transit systems, there is a tendency to create hugely expensive bits of infrastructure with no real idea whether they are actually a sensible way to spend the money. One can make plans and forecasts from morning til night, but these projects are really a massive punt by politicians and civil servants, where the stake money is provided by the tax payer.
For example, consider the Jubilee Line Extension in London. This project has without question created wealth, but not for the people who paid for it. The total scheme cost somewhere in the region of £3.5 billion pounds after overspend, and a few years after it opened it was pretty clear that it had a positive effect on land prices (see the Transport Blog).
So taxpayers covered the building costs and the ongoing operations at risk, whereas local landowners received the capital gains while doing nothing. Not a bad deal for landlords.
BRT - The next big thing?
The plans for Bristol are to build a guided busway, which is certainly not a new concept. Have a look at the public documents at the website of the BRTuk lobbying organisation (membership only £275) and you'll find details of dozens of cities around the world with BRT routes. Ho Chi Minh City even has a BRT, which must surely be something for the Labour/LibDem faithful to shout about. (Feel free to pause for a quick chorus of the Internationale, guys).
Mind you, the Vietnamese measurements for the required space for two lanes of buses don't seem to leave much room for happy cyclists and walkers as per the West of England Partnership concept diagrams.
Here in the UK, a comparable project that is closer to completion is the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. Very similar in concept to the WoE plan, the Cambridge project has been built along the route of a disused railway, but in doing so did not encroach on an existing cycle path. In fact Sustrans, who have been extremely vocal in their opposition to the WoE plan, were a major supporter of the Cambridge concept:
Sustrans supports the guided bus project. Moreover, with its associated maintenance track it offers great potential benefits for cyclists and walkers. The route is expected to form part of the National Cycle Network and this is welcomed.
The maintenance track surface should be tarmac or equivalent throughout. There is a danger that were the surface to deteriorate, people would be tempted to walk or even cycle on the guideway. Access to the stops should focus on the public walking and cycling there. This necessitates a network of high-quality feeder paths to be constructed at the same time as the busway. More thought needs to be given to crossing details for cyclists, walkers and horse riders.
It would be desirable for the buses to employ hybrid drives to allow electric operation within the City area. Also, the buses should have the capability to carry cycles.
I'm told that a group from Bristol City Council are thinking about a fact-finding trip to have a look at the Cambridge system. The latest newsletter from Cambridge is available here. Latest update:
guide beams are being laid, [albeit] delayed due to bad weather, [...] trials of guided buses start in Spring 2008. The system is still scheduled to open Spring 2009.
I like seasonal deadlines for projects - "Spring" is much more forgiving than something specific like "March 1st" or "May 31st"
BRT - is it worth it?
Establishing whether constructing a new public transport project is a worthwhile exercise is not an easy process. The tools for estimating the benefits of such projects are computer models, passenger usage estimates and traffic planning. But, when advising clients on project management, I always remind them that a person’s confidence in their estimate of required work to complete a task is inversely proportional to their skill at estimation, an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (from their seminal paper: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6. ] 121-1134)
Disregarding for a moment the arguments about carbon footprints and other spurious bits of anti-growth environmentalism, it would be marvellous if we could construct a a simple measure of the costs implicit in different forms of mass transit in a comparable form. There is a subsection of the transport planning discipline that deals with this, using concepts such as Generalised Cost, but I've not managed to find any such figures in the BRT proposals. You can use a measurement like TRANSIT CAPITAL INVESTMENT PER ROUTE MILE, but regrettably the data for such a calculation is only available after you've spent the cash and built the system.
When I don't have answers, I always like to use an adversarial process to find them. So what we need is a group who favour public transport but are prepared to give a strong critique of BRT. How about the Light Rail lobby? Many Bus Rapid Transit projects are built as an alternative to Light Rail. In the case of Cambridge and Bristol, both projects are effectively a repurposing of older rail systems. What do the Light Railistas have to say? Quite a lot, actually, and none of it flattering.
In Houston, Texas, a BRT project was axed in favour of light rail. The reason?
"[The Transport Authority] changed some of their ridership projection criteria to make these lines more favorable if we did them as rail."
Not exactly a smoking gun. But what about a more general survey?
"[Experience] does suggest, in light of experience with both LRT and so-called "BRT", is that theory-based ridership forecasting models, approved by a [Transport Authority] promoting "BRT", may not tell planners, decision makers, and the public the whole story."
What next for the Bristol & Bath Cycle Path
We've got two options in front of us. A utilitarian argument to spend a load of cash to build a bus service on the promise of improvements in local transport provision, or an aesthetic argument to maintain an attractive and popular public amenity.
For the moment, I shall remain sitting on the fence, despite the obvious discomfort that comes with that position. I'm still trying to find definitive answers for the following:
- How much will a BRT route really cost?
- What are the projected passenger numbers?
- What's the ultimate cost-per-mile of running the system? And if it's less that that of an automobile or a regular bus, should the project continue?
Note: if anyone can summarise the Joint Local Transport Plan for me, I'd really appreciate it. It's giving me a migraine.
