Hmmm - a total of 1,128 metres of new bus lane spread over six edge of town locations.
That said, I am sure Cllr Arthur is looking forward to hearing what the Gogar Underpass and Newbridge Roundabout residents have to say about the projects.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
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Posted 1 year ago #
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Hmmm - a total of 1,128 metres of new bus lane spread over six edge of town locations.
For reasons that completely escape me, I am apparently in a particularly uncynical mood. Perhaps I finally ran out.
Anyway, these are described as the "quick wins" - suggesting that there are more radical proposals in the pipeline. Getting the small-but-easy schemes out of the way early doors, rather than including them in the we're-going-to-consult-on-these-twice-over-three-years-and-then-only-implement-two-of-them list, is probably a good thing?
Posted 1 year ago # -
ahhh @Frenchy - I do admire your optimism. The reasons for my cynicism is that the Council and Scottish Government are claiming "quick wins" from a programme announced in 2019...and again in 2020...ohh look here it is being announced again in 2021...stone the crows, here are some "quick wins" being announced in 2022.
(Source - annual Scottish Government Programme for Government Document).
Posted 1 year ago # -
Have now looked a bit more closely at this.
One of the "quick wins", at Gilmerton crossroads, is...the existing layout...
Posted 1 year ago # -
Ignoring the (justified) cynicism and (less justified) “quick”, is any of this ‘progress’ - in any meaningful sense??
Posted 1 year ago # -
The quick wins are already all in place, the report is just starting the ETRO process for them.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Mmm
So either SA doesn’t understand or he’s doing a bit of disingenuous self-promotion?
Nothing will change unless there are objections - and they are upheld?
And the slow wins??
Posted 1 year ago # -
So the first table is schemes already underway - fine. But I'm pretty sure most in the second table have been in place for some time, including the Gogar underpass one, the Kaimes one and the Hermiston signalisation. Is this report several months/years out of date?
Also, what is the 'existing eastbound bus lane' at Gillespie Crossroads and how do they intend to fit in any more on a fairly narrow two lane road? Do they mean the one on approach to the t-junction by the WoL bridge in Slateford?
EDIT: no, they don't, because that's in there separately as the Inglis Green Junction bus lane. Any other ideas? It's in the first table so has presumably happened already??
Posted 1 year ago # -
Roads engineers should be banned from driving and owning cars. So that they truly- and daily experience the hell of being stuck on a bus in a jam of single occupant cars. Or being on a bike having to navigate same, all while jinking around all the awkward cycle junctions...
Posted 1 year ago # -
Bus lanes
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7-7-7 will come to TEC in December. I don't expect further consultation via the hub will be required, but schemes will be subject to the TRO process. I had useful discussions on pushing exemplar schemes (more than just 7-7-7) via the ETRO process.
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https://twitter.com/cllrscottarthur/status/1589964955784081408
Posted 1 year ago # -
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@CllrScottArthur amendment to speed up 7-7-7 implementn & change parking rules to free up #buslanes
[hopefully now a year or so, rather than 2-3]
All parties agree
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https://mobile.twitter.com/spokeslothian/status/1600822530709032960
Posted 1 year ago # -
Posted 1 year ago #
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Presumably just England.
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More than 130 bus operators have signed up, including National Express and Stagecoach, while Go-Ahead said the promotion – branded “Get Around for £2” – would save passengers more than 75% of the fare on some routes in Yorkshire.
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That’s Jan - Mar, before then -
Posted 1 year ago # -
Been a bit of subsidising buses versus trains thread on Twitter kicked off by @Dave wondering if the millions spent to take off rail peak fares should be used to lower bus fares.
Road capacity is main problem though. One Intercity train takes many coach loads. Rail journeys moved to road compete with private cars. It's not debatable whether drivers really like bus travel. They don't.
They will however drive to a rail based mode of transport.
We came back into city on tram from Gyle after getting dropped off by friends with car. Trams every 3 mins and all standing room only.
On way up north we had used Ember (running late so we missed connections). Many of their buses were sold out due to lack of rail options north.EDIT: @morningsider points out many more people use bus than rail in Scotland but think we all agree we need a mix. If bus lanes were better then more drivers might shift?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Presumably someone with a degree in logistics has done the algebra to work out whether it's more desirable on balance to have public transport that is infrequent but very predictable/reliable, or P/T that is very frequent but susceptible to delays. I'm thinking along the lines of train path diagrams and timetable compression methods and stuff like that.
Obviously we want P/T to be on demand or as near to it as possible, and not to be delayed all the time. AFAICS, trams that run entirely or mostly on segregated routes, and the London Underground, are closest to that ideal.
By contrast, motorists have their own special segregated routes called "motorways", and they keep spoiling things by crashing and breaking down and all trying to use them at the same time.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@Laidback - I agree we need a mix of public transport modes. I really just wanted to highlight that rail gets more than 10 times the financial support of buses for carrying roughly one quarter of the passengers.
£15m to remove peak time rail fares for six months is equivalent to 1.8% of annual Scottish Government support to ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper. It is 24% of annual Scottish Government support to bus services. Add in the fact that buses are more likely to be used by the less well-off, and trains by the better off, then the funding really should have been directed at the bus industry.
Posted 1 year ago # -
In relation to various posts.
I think it’s optimistic to think that any of this is worked out sensibly and will all go according to any sort of plan!
As we all know, ‘transport’ is a mess in a myriad of conflicting/competing and under-defined ways.
And that’s even before/without ‘politics’.
In short ‘most people’ think roads are the most important thing. ‘We’ have a vested interest too!
Decades of dealing with that have led to masses of bad decisions and, largely, the impossibility of considering/calculating the benefits of all spending - past, present and future.
In some ways rail is more difficult. There are ‘fans’ - not just in a nostalgic sense - though there is a legacy factor with consequences there.
There are people who would close most of the network - rails to roads or busways is hardly a new idea. (Personally I would restore the direct rail route to Perth, but that is a different conversation!)
Imagine closing all rail lines. Unthinkable in/around London, undesirable for Glasgow, difficult for the ‘northern powerhouse’ area.
Imagine a freight only network - with nearly compulsory use for lorry journeys over X miles.
Unlikely to happen, but simplistic solutions without working out the consequences - all too common.
Is too much money spent on rail for ’the wrong sort of passengers’? Complicated.
Are private car users paying sufficiently for that they use? Many people (including me) would say no.
Do bus users get a good deal? Definitely no.
It’s good that SG is experimenting with cheaper fares. Whether removing the peak fare ‘surcharge’ is a good idea remains to be seen. Certainly it would have been harder without Covid.
However there are so many transport things that could be improved without spending vast sums of money.
You know - proper integration, like bus stops outside rail stations not a 5 minute walk away, ‘seamless’ fares between modes AND operators. People living in Edinburgh perhaps underestimate how good LB is compared with most bus companies.
Better and reliable information. Stagecoach recently changed a lot of bus times. Their app is actually quite good, doesn’t have other companies info on of course.
However, bus station screen info didn’t get updated for WEEKS. No idea if someone has lost the password or ‘the right contract isn’t in place’…
Etc.
Posted 1 year ago # -
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Scottish government urged to introduce cap on bus fares
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Posted 1 year ago # -
@morningsider: I really just wanted to highlight that rail gets more than 10 times the financial support of buses for carrying roughly one quarter of the passengers.
Sorry if I missed the reference to the source for that earlier in the thread, but I'd be interested to know how that works out in terms of subsidy per passenger mile? I have a notion that most bus journeys are shorter than most rail journeys (obviously there will be exceptions to this 'rule').
The other factor which might need to be considered is that different areas have different mixes of bus vs rail provision. For example, LB* probably takes a lot of traffic which in other cities - particularly Glasgow? - might use rail.
* And the tram? Or does that count as a railway?
Posted 1 year ago # -
@ejstubbs - the figures are from the Scottish Budget 2023/24 documents.
Government support for rail services per passenger kilometre is published by the Office of Rail and Road. In Scotland franchise holders receive 32.8p per passenger km and Network Rail 24.5p - a total of 57.3p per passenger km.
These 2021/22 figures are skewed by reduced passenger numbers due to Covid, but give a decent idea of just how much is invested in rail.
Similar figures for bus are not published by anyone. I have had a dig through the data and it is possible to work out a rough figure of taxpayer support per passenger km, but I can't get the time periods to match up and covid skews all the figures. From a rough back the fag packet estimate, support for buses per passenger km is significantly less than that for rail services.
Posted 1 year ago # -
What would be the taxpayer support for buses if we include the road building and road maintenance required for them?
Because they are free at the point of use, everyone seems to forget that roads cost taxpayers' money to build and maintain.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Rail also carries much more freight than buses, but not roads. So not all rail spending is per passenger. Depends if you're including network rail subsidy in totals and how to compare that to road surface spending.
All a bit messy.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@neddie - an interesting question. In 2020, buses accounted for just 1.1% of total vehicle mileage in Scotland. Transport Scotland and Councils spend in the region of £500 million per year on road maintenance, so assuming maintenance spend is proportional to distance travelled then that would be in the region of £5.5 million per year for bus related road maintenance across Scotland. Peanuts in transport terms.
Obviously back of a fag packet figures again. Lots of other factors in play - buses are heavier than cars and likely to be more damaging to roads, most roads never see a bus, buses carry far more people than cars and are likely less damaging per passenger mile travelled and so on.
@toomanybikes - a reasonable point. I'm not sure if this is accounted for in the Office of Rail and Road figures.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@Morningsider: buses are heavier than cars and likely to be more damaging to roads...buses carry far more people than cars and are likely less damaging per passenger mile travelled
The widely accepted rule of thumb is that damage to the roadbed is proportional to the 4th power of the axle load of the vehicle. A typical double decker bus weighs in the region of 11-12 tonnes, whereas a car is more likely to be 1.5 to 2 tonnes. So best case for a two-axle bus is that its road wear is around 57 times worse than a car.
However, the above does not take the weight of the passengers into account. Add 57 passengers - say 4.2 tonnes at around 75kg per passenger - to an 11 tonne bus and it's actually something like 210 times worse for roadbed damage than a single-occupancy 2-tonne car, or more than 3.5 times worse per passenger than the car. Halve that the passenger load and it's more like 4 times worse per passenger.
I don't know whether Lothian's Enviro 400XLBs actually count as having three axles, or two-and-a-bit. If three then their break-even point vs a single occupancy car would be much lower.
Again, though, very back-of-a-fag-packet figures (even though I gave up more then 25 years ago).
Posted 1 year ago #
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