Jon C at Auckland Trains reports that Auckland City Council’s transport committee have approved the suggested changes to the bus upgrade project I talked about in Monday’s post. The main changes are that the bus lanes will no longer meander around the back of the shops at Valley Road and Balmoral, and also that on-street parking along Dominion Road will be removed to enable the bus lanes to operate for longer hours (hopefully) and to allow a high quality cycle lane to be constructed. I will scour the meeting minutes once they come out to finalise the details on whether there’s a risk of Dominion Road’s bus lanes becoming T2 “managed lanes”, but let’s put that issue to one side for now.
My post on Monday suggested that perhaps there should be rethink over the most appropriate public transport solution to the Dominion Road corridor, and in particular whether bus lanes will provide sufficient capacity for the passenger demand along that route in the longer run – particularly if the Dominion Road corridor intensifies along the lines of Auckland City Council’s plans for it. I still think that we will eventually need light-rail along this corridor, but unless the Auckland Transport CCO completely reverses the plans Auckland City is slowly in the process of implementing, it seems that at least for now the Dominion Road upgrade will be bus-based.
So, for me the question now becomes “how can we best do that?” The comments thread of my previous post threw up some interesting ideas – particularly surrounding the concept of putting the bus lanes down the middle of the road. This is an idea used in many overseas cities, particularly Seoul in South Korea, as can be seen in the video below:
There are a number of advantages that arise from putting the bus lanes down the middle of the road. These include less conflicting movements between cars and buses (people pulling out of driveways go straight into the traffic lane) as well as some safety improvements for vehicles (the clogged up general traffic lane often blocks sight of buses barrelling down the bus lane for vehicles on the road trying to turn right into a side-street). Of course there is the disadvantage that the bus stop needs to be in the middle of the road, which means that either you have a tonne of pedestrian crossings or you somewhat limit the number of stops you have (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
A comparison of cross-sections from the two options is shown below, firstly with the typical mid-block cross section in the design currently being proposed by Auckland City Council:
If we shift the bus lanes to the centre, we end up with something like this:
At stops you could get rid of the median, which would create and 800mm wide “island” on each side. Clearly that wouldn’t be enough, so you would need to squeeze out a bit more width at each stop to accommodate people waiting for the bus somehow. But this is going to be problematic in mixing with the cyclelanes at each stop, so I’m sure it would be possible to figure out a way of doing this – perhaps by narrowing the footpath and cyclelanes for a bit.
From the air, the new layout might look a bit like this (green is cyclelane, grey is road lane, red is bus lane):
As well as the benefits of putting the bus lanes in the centre of the road that I have already mentioned, an obvious long term benefit is that typically trams run in the middle of the road (to make crossovers easier and so that you only need one set of power-supply poles), which means that it would be far far easier to upgrade this kind of road layout to being suitable for trams – just slap down some tracks and put up the wires – than it would be for more traditional bus lanes.
This is just an idea I should emphasise, and I still have some level of uncertainty regarding pedestrian safety. But it certainly is an interesting idea, and could be a very useful first step towards eventually running light-rail along Dominion Road.
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Putting the lanes down the centre and reducing the number of stations is probably a good idea to speed up bus times even further. This would really help with getting more people using the services. I do question whether such a big median would be needed in a centre lane implementation. As for pedestrian crossings, these are only really going to be at the stations so are places we probably want cars traveling a bit slower around anyway. Long term they can be replaced by bridges if needed. Either way it probably creates more crossing places than exist now so that must be a good thing for locals.
I’m sure someone on here found a street view pic a few months ago of a centre bus lane and station in Europe somewhere that looked good.
Like you I hope some fresh blood at Auckland Transport will see some sense and make some good changes to projects like this and AMETI but unfortunately it is likely to be months, if not years before they start to get their head around things. Perhaps we need to get the new chief planner from Porirua to start reading this blog so he can make some quick changes.
I think this makes a lot of sense. I have seen it in I think Nantes or Tours in France, and it looked like it worked really well, and it was the same basic configuration as for the tram lines.
It would definitely push the system toward limited stops, but I think this is a good thing for a main route like this (faster), and light rail would have limited stops anyway.
great to see – totally convinced me!
refer to my comment on your ‘What to do with Dominion Road’ post
Re my last post it was tours – you can see it on Google maps – try Avenue de Grammont Tours France (it has street view).
This is an exciting idea Jarbury – it would provide a such a good example for future light rail development. You could see it down Tamaki Drive, Remuera Road, Gt South Rd maybe.
If you have the stops opposite each other then they can only be .8m each wide. But if you stagger the stops then each can be 1.6m wide. That doesn’t feel much narrower than a Melbourne CBD tram platform.
Then you can do away with the tree strip on each side of the road when you put in a stop. That gains you an extra 2m. For a total of 3.6m width. That’s plenty, even if you wanted to cover them!
One of the issues I raised in the other post ‘What to do with Dominion Road’ was space issues in general with arterial roads in Auckland.
However, I can see the problem solvers working through these sorts of issues quite nicely….. thankyou obi!
While trams used to run down the centre of the roads in Auckland, I suspect modern OSH/safety and planning regulations will have more stringent safety guidelines.
This will be especially apparent around prospective bus/tram stops and general pedestrian/road interaction.
But; from your comments and ideas these issues are certainly resolvable.
Obi makes a very good point. Also, you want the bus stops downstream of intersections, no you could do the “shift” over an intersection for example.
Further options (for localised widening only) would be dispensing with the landscaping strip, and narrowing the footpaths or cycle lanes – the latter would hurt, but as long as they are elevated and stay at least at 1500…
Obi, Jarbury
Where should Auckland Transport send the cheque?! I think you have basically cracked it.
I don’t think you need any median between the buses, the Northern Busway doesn’t have one for example and that is posted for 80km/h.
There is no issue with widths at stops either. The existing design provides for indented bus bays at each stop, and these must be at least 2.5m wide each. You would simply have to straighten out the curb line and transfer that width to the centre of the road for some platforms and shelters. The slight left to right displacement of the road lane could even act as a traffic calming measure when approaching stops/crossings, like a long chicane.
I kinda like how this means that side road traffic and car drivers pulling out of driveways only interfere with other car traffic, rather than block or delay the bus lanes.
The buses wont be mingling with left turning vehicles at intersections which means it should be a lot easier to programme the junctions to give the buses priority
You could more or less turn Dominion Rd into a sort of expressway by only allowing right turns at signalised intersections. Then the buses could bowl on straight through.
If you arranged the stops at the traffic lights properly and kept them pretty widely spaced (say every 500m), a bus might only need to stop six times between Mt Roskill shops and upper Queen St.
Why not have the buses going counter-flow so that passengers can embark/disembark onto a single wider island in the middle of the road? This was how it was done in a couple of those links Nick R posted in the last post.
Would it be best to place a curb(/large curb/small fence) between the bus and car lanes in this situation? The advantage being that it would keep cars from straying into the bus lane creating a better QTN (almost RTN except for the intersections). The disadvantage being buses cannot use the car lanes to pass each other at the stops (micro stations…). It would allow “counter flow” buses to be run which would allow buses traveling both directions to use a common center platfrom/station. This would halve the cost of stops/stations (or allow better quality ones). It also shortness the distance the tree strip must be sacrificed for station space (compared to obi’s offset stops). I like the idea of counter flow running but think it might scare the public. Could it work on this route? Would on-line stops be setting the route up to reach its capacity in the next decade. I think is unlikely light rail will be reinstalled in the near future.
Agreed. One option between buslanes and full-blown busways, is what I call median busways. if you did that here, it would easily have sufficient capacity for 60 buses/hour, and would mostly be free of traffic conflicts. With some judicious traffic light pre-emption at the major intersections,
Now, this would also mean median stops, as is done for trams in many European systems. In reply to David, all you need to do to make this work is have buses with doors down *both* sides of the vehicle; and when they were serving a median stop, the doors on the driver’s side of the vehicle would be the ones which were opened. Something like this is now being used in Johannesburg, which is developing a very extensive system of median busways (google ‘rea vaya’ for more information).
The point is if and when light rail became viable, the stops would be ready-made for the users – and it would not preclude running buses down the traffic lanes at offpeak times. This is done in a couple of European tram systems – the tram is in the road median, but complemented by buses as well.
Refer http://buswatchnz.blogspot.com/ for some more details
Demanding buses have doors on both sides is a significant investment and, unless median bus lanes were widespread, unlikely to be worth it. That’s why I thought maybe counterflow could be simple local solution, though I guess the end points where buses change from driving on one side to the other could be difficult.
The bus lanes could still be used for parking outside peak times, this would protect cyclists in their new lanes…
So we have a seemingly better solution, we have solved some of the issues of it and are pretty much all in agreement on it. Now how do we just get the politicians and those in running the project to see the light and actually impliment it
David – the busses probably aren’t such an issue as this is probably a few years away from construction yet and by that time we will be needing new buses somewhere anyway, it just means that all the new buses go to this route.
I think it is much simpler to have side platforms and use normal buses than muck around with custom bus designs.
Also side platforms keeps the bus route straighter.
Question… If you converted this route to light rail, then what do you do at the ends? Presumably at the northern end you’d run it down Queen St to Britomart. Can modern trams climb up a hill as steep as Queen St? Are there any other grades on the route that aren’t suitable for trams? Where would you terminate the service at the southern end?
I don’t think it would be worth the hassle of running the buses in opposite directions or getting special buses just to get an island platform. It seems like staggering the stops is necessary anyway to get the required width for waiting passengers.
In terms of the ends, yes run it down Queen St to Britomart. I don’t think the hill would be a problem, the old trams managed it. At the southern end, there is going to need to be an interchange with feeder buses somewhere. Perhaps around the existing Mt Roskill bus depot?
The worst of the grades up Queen st is around the intersection with K Rd, there I think it would be good to put the track into a cut and cover tunnel to eliminate the worst of the hil but also to allow for an underground link to what should be the nearby CBD tunnel.
Interesting take on the issue on 34th Street in New York on a road of similar width: buses running 2-way on northern half of street with 2 lanes of cars diverted 1-way on the southern half. I’m not advocating a one-way conversion of Dominion Rd., but thought this was interesting.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/brt/html/next/34th_transit.shtml
I think down Queen St to Britomart is ideal (via either the proposed K Rd or Newton stations, maybe both), perhaps even a little further to the Viaduct and/or Tank Farm. Long term there are plenty of extensions to speculate about.
The grades aren’t an issue trams would take them with ease.
Not sure if going underground at K Road would be much use, all it would do would use a lot of money to put one stop underground. I like the idea of trams at street level rather than in some dingy concrete stop under K Rd, plus the portals would create quite a barrier for pedestrians and other road users. The CBD tunnel station would be too far away for a direct link anyway, it’s going to be over on Pitt St.
I think the logical place for the southern terminus would be an interchange adjacent to SH20 (i.e. somehwere between May Rd and Dominion Rd, wherever the proposed rail station is to go). In the short term this would be a transfer point between feeder and local buses and the tramway, and in the longer term a tranfer point to the Avondale-Southdown line.
I guess the Mt Roskill depot is the appropriate place for the stabling yards, maybe for the interchange itself.
“The bus lanes could still be used for parking outside peak times, this would protect cyclists in their new lanes…”
You want Dom Road to have bus lanes 24/7. If for no other reason than to really tow the shit out of anyone who thinks he can “just park in there for a second / just dropping these cases of soda of at the dairy / posting that letter / waiting for my girlfriend to get her hair done…”
Agree totally with median bus lanes. Pretty standard in the big busway cities such as Curitiba and Bogota, amongst others, where busways are fully segregated from general traffic.
Gutter running bus lanes are just a waste of time. Conflict from turning vehicles sees to that.
For some street profiles of the Nantes busway mentioned above http://www.bhns.fr/IMG/pdf/BHNS_Nantes.pdf
Concur, have a look at this specific idea, from Cape Town:
http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/irt/Documents/Commuter%20pamphlet%20ENG%200806.pdf
To make sense of some of the pictures, note that SA drives on the left, like New Zealand.
I remember they worked really well in Seoul. I lived there for 3 years and took them almost every day to get wherever. The only issue I can see for Auckland may be that the speed was in part due to the bus lanes going around stops. ie, you would have one lane for the stopped buses and embarking passengers, and another median bus lane around it for buses that didnt need to stop, so essentially the bus stops for the trunk lines were 4 lanes wide, with other traffic lanes outside that. So you would have to have a pretty wide area for each station. Or just the one lane for the stations and more waiting times.
A positive for this system was the basic simplicity of it and the ease of getting anywhere. From the large intersection near my apartment in Seoul there were two large median stops, and smaller, normal ones on the side of the road on the side streets. From a 150m radius I could catch a bus to almost anywhere in the city. Airport buses, local buses, britomart buses, cross town, and even inter city Auckland-Hamilton buses could all be concentrated on 4 or 5 main stops on Dominion rd.
On Dominion Rd you might only have six or seven ‘super stops’, so having all buses run all stops wouldn’t be much of an issue.
I wonder if it would be possible to have express buses overtake at stops by moving into the opposite bus lane?
Yeah the overtaking of buses stopped to collect passengers could be problematic. Hopefully with the super stops you could have people tagging on for their rides before actually getting on the bus. Then they could load up through both doors really quickly.
If stop spacing were rationalised and high capacity articulated (even double articulated) buses used along with a simplified route structure then two lanes with in-stream stops should be sufficient. Depending on ticketing in-stream stops could handle 25 to 40 buses per hours comfortably. Double articulated buses every 2 minutes could in theory move 8,100 people per hour.
Basically you are just building a metro or light rail line using high capacity buses and a dedicated busway.
Curitiba does this without the need for passing lanes at most stops keeping the street profile something that could just fit into Dominion Road.
http://www.cmt4austin.org/ImageFilesBRT/Curitibia_dedicatedLane_30pc.JPG
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wA1bAryszQI/Rl-LExWivTI/AAAAAAAAAJY/fmoMz3m_V4Q/s400/TR+04+Curitiba+Brazil_jpg.jpg
Put the stops underground or overhead at intersections, then there is plenty of space for 4 lanes wide. Straight through lanes then also avoid traffic lights.
That sounds pretty expensive/difficult/ugly (for overhead) though Andrew.
Or simply have centre bus lanes with ‘super stop’ platforms, traffic light premption that favours buses, and only one lane each way for general traffic.
Looks like the idea’s gaining traction: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10654187&pnum=0
“If you could treat the bus as a tram and have it going on its own set of lights through one central lane, far less road is going to be required by the bus lane,” Mr Baguley said. How’s this work? I’m quite intrigued.
I think the words that need bolding there is the “one central lane” bit. No no no Ken, the idea is for two central bus lanes you noob.
It was a good article, looks like some submissions on centre bus lanes are in order
James B – With the bus lanes in the centre you don’t need a median strip so thats 1.6m of space saved. What does concern me is perhaps Ken Baguley is suggesting just have one buslane for the entire road and have it only used for peak direction buses.
Thanks Matt. Yeah having a peak hour bus lane would be a waste of time given that that is almost exactly what they have now.
Ken Baguley is not very knowledgable on transport issues… Makes sense that he is then chairman of the transport committee…
Like having a burglar as the Pope…
Just one of the reasons to have the transport body separate from as much political interference as possible
Sounds like a great idea but how to cars turn right. Will there be a median strip down the very middle for right turns
The proposal already plans to block right turns at some intersections:
” Right hand turn restrictions:
The new plan will prevent some right hand turns from Dominion Road on to adjoining roads. These will include George St, Lisnoe Ave, Bellevue Ave, Elizabeth St, Herbert Rd, Ewington Ave, Dunbar Rd, Tennyson St, Queens Ave, Hazel Ave, Foch Ave, Kings Rd, Donald Cres, and Cambrai Ave.”
It is unlikely the median as pictured above will remain as it is inefficient use of space. That space can be better used for wider footpaths, Tram style bus stops etc. Possibly if a few right turns were deemed to be critical there is a possibility that this space could be a right turn waiting lane at an intersection. It is prob more efficient for any traffic wanting to turn right to loop around the block to its left so it can go straight through the intersection.
The area is generally a kind of grid, so chances are people will just have to go around the block and turn left into another street. Probably you would need to provide for “u-turns” at intersections quite easily.