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Intermittent Bus Lanes - an input for BPS
Written By silkboard - 5 January, 2011
Bangalore BMTC Bus BRTS lanes Transportation public transport BPS
Those of you who are coming over to CiSTUP/IISc on Jan 10 will get to hear about in from the Professor himself. But the "intermittent bus lane" concept that was demonstrated at Lisbon in 2005 could be a source of input for evolving Bus Priority System (BPS) proposals in Bangalore.
Naveen is working hard to put up a first cut of a whitepaper on BPS. Once that document is ready, it will be easy for us to move forward on this project as we can align around some tangible written and printable content. We will be releasing this whitepaper on BPS at CiSTUP on Jan 10. Post that, let us all get together to refine, grow and improve on it.
Back to the concept of IBL (Intermittent Bus Lane), the intro paragraph in the paper from Prof Veigas and others, describes it this way:
The concept of Intermittent Bus Lane (IBL) ... an innovative approach to achieve bus priority. The IBL consists of a lane in which the status of each section changes according to the presence or not of a bus ... when a bus is approaching such a section, the status of that lane is changed to BUS lane, and after the bus moves out of the section it becomes a normal lane again, open to general traffic. Therefore when bus services are not so frequent, general traffic will not suffer much, and bus priority can still be obtained.
As you see, IBL would be special lanes on a Road, which will become dedicated to Bus only when a Bus is around.
Now, for the BPS, our sole goal (for the pilot) is to make 335E and G1 routes do their trip faster (by 5 or 10 minutes) than a private car. So the thoughts are focused on two things:
- Making Bus cross the top 5 crowded signals via underpass or special lanes/signals. We need a traffic survey to figure the top 5 signals on G1/335E, you could guess wind Tunnel Road, Lifestyle, Kundalahalli etc to be there.
- Making Bus cross top 2 crowded sections of the route faster via special lanes. Lifestyle to Richmond, and Marathahalli Bridge to Brookfields could be candidates there.
While we need to work on picking the 5 signals and 1-2 stretches based on some real data, Prof Veigas'es IBL concepts and lessons may be of use for #2 above.
And since we are at it, do look at this Deccan Herald article (Slow response to BRT) to understand why BPS is required. The "baggage" or "wrong perception" that BRTS carries is the reason such projects are running slow. We first need BPS to win people over.
... the authorities concerned blame the narrow roads of the City for not being able to provide comfortable and highly economical mode of transport for the citizens ... He argued that 60 percent of Bangalore’s roads are narrow and BRTS could be introduced only on wide roads which allow two way transport ...
While the BRT plans on outer ring road are good, if the BRT is implemented after all those new flyovers are completed and ORR becomes signal free, a car user could still do Hebbal to Silkboard trip faster by flying over everything while the Bus goes under all those flyoves to pick up the passengers. The key is to make car and bike people see that Bus goes faster, so that convincing them to switch becomes a lot lot easier. Let us all hope that BRT on ORR will be able to achieve that.
cheers,
SB aka Pranav
COMMENTS
yes, but only around the signal
silkboard - 6 January, 2011 - 04:20
There is a difference between acquiring 2 km long width for 2 extra lanes (and at times killing 100s of trees in the process) versus doing so for just 200 meters before (1 oncoming lane) and 200 meters after (oncoming lane from other direction) the signal. This way, the effort spent on acquiring extra width (court cases, protests, money etc) is more worth it.
The trick is to find a solution for the so called narrow interior roads by providing priority where it will "help" the most. There is not much fun, rocket science or bravery involved in planning BRT on Outer Ring Road, or Peripheral Ring Road or NH7 from Hebbal to Devanahalli.
silkboard - 6 January, 2011 - 04:41
Let us do some maths, shall we? On a sample stretch - Domlur to Marathahalli, about 4 Km.
- A traditional, copybook BRTS implementation would acquire one lane (5 m) on each side of Old Airport Road
- 4 km x (5 + 5 = 10) meters = 40000 sqm ~ 320K sqft.
Now, let us pick top 3 delay causing signals (Wind Tunnel Road, Suranjan Das Road , and Outer Ring road).
- 200m before (only need before, not after) each signal. add 100m more for Marathahalli signal, 300m. So total pre-signal lane length = 200+200+300 = 700m
- Need one lane on each side of the signal, so 700m x 2 = 1400 m ! 1.5 Km worth of single lane width.
- That is 1.5 KM x 5m = 7500 sqm ~ 60K sqft
60K sqft, vs 320K lakh sqft. That is about FIVE times less land to acquire.
The other crib against BRTS in Bangalore - Can't enforce dedicated lanes, people don't listen - remains.
- But here, you have 1.5 km worth of lanes to manage, vs 8 km worth of lanes (4 km each side) in traditional approach.
- So that is again five times less enforcement effort.
Advantage of traditional BRTS approach? Buses would travel faster. But, how fast do we need them to be?
- Just enough to make buses do the trip faster than cars? 10 minute advantage (talking 335E) would be good enough to generate interest in Buses/BPS and tilt the "public perception".
- Compare that to current state (20-30 minutes slower, avg delay 335E wrt to car) and perception.
The challenge is in proving that by picking top-5 signals and top-2 slow stretches for priorty, we can give buses the 10 minute advantage over private transport. If we can prove or demonstrate that, BBMP, BMTC or anyone will buy the concept.
Transmogrifier - 6 January, 2011 - 07:06
200m before (only need before, not after) each signal
I had exactly that in mind when I was thinking of this (pic below from that post).
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Exactly - 200m Before Signals on the lines of 2 wheelers
Vasanth - 6 January, 2011 - 06:28
2 wheelers have the major advantage in signal since they can penetrate and go till front enabling 1st pass in the signal. On the similar lines, buses should get 1st pass in the signals such as Lifestyle signal, Wheeler's Road etc. Problem is the width of the buses on the Airport road for BPS, easier on the one way stretch.
rackstar - 6 January, 2011 - 04:15
Top 5 crowded signals need to have 3 lane road on each direction to implement a bus lane. Without a bus lane signal priority is difficult. There are not many junctions in old airport road that are wide enough. Should we choose a different corridor?
We can have bus lanes from corporation to majestic, and around majestic area. This will be useful for buses of other routes too, other than buses that go to old airport road.
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