Guided bus transit systems

September 11, 2020 1:11 AM

Hackaday has a look at Adeleide's O-Bahn, a guided bus system built in the 1980s and still running. The concept is also used a few other places in the world, as sort of a compromise between light rail and regular bus routes.
posted by Harald74 (18 comments total)

I lived near the Cambridge (UK) guided bus system, and it was a regular feature in the local press. A quick peek at the wikipedia entry for it brings this up:

The original cost estimate of £116 million rose to £181 million by December 2010. An independent review of the project was announced on 21 September 2010, in which the Cambridge MP Julian Huppert at the time described the busway as a "white elephant"

Something I remember being a problem was that concrete would crack, owing to hot summers, and make the ride along the guided busway bumpy and unpleasant. Presumably this would be even worse in Adelaide, but as the article notes there has been continued investment there. Which is the secret to having functional public transport.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:34 AM on September 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Wow, cool! I had a ton of questions at first, but the first linked article did a really good job of laying out all the answers about the advantages and disadvantages of the system.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:47 AM on September 11, 2020

I also live near the Cambridge guided busway (*waves*), and if I recall it took a lot longer to complete than expected - my partner, who grew up at the non-Cambridge end, enrolled in a college course in Cambridge in 2007/8 on the assumption that it would be finished by then and he'd be able to use it. It only began operations in 2011, and he ended up having to get a ride to college every day instead.

The thing I love most about the busway is not the bus aspect but the fact that it has a mostly-flat, whisper-smooth cycle lane next to it. 14 traffic-free miles passing through some lovely countryside and a few sites of historical interest? Yes, thank you.
posted by terretu at 2:52 AM on September 11, 2020 [8 favorites]

It's basically the brutalist version of a tram. Google image search found me this piece of nostalgia, which is probably the same bus I used to take all the way through Tea Tree Plaza Interchange to visit someone who lived in the far hinterlands of Golden Grove.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:35 AM on September 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

And the unforseen problem of drivers mistaking the track as a turnoff, getting stuck, panicking and jamming their car on the track as they attempt to back out of their dilemma. It happens...oh...twice a year in Adelaide. Or it used to. A mistake one never makes twice.
Probably.
posted by Kermit the Destroyer at 5:02 AM on September 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Same thing can happen with Tram lines. Ask Toronto. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/queen-quay-streetcar-tunnel-suv-union-station-1.5435760
posted by Popular Ethics at 6:23 AM on September 11, 2020

Same thing can happen with underground bus ways, like in Cambridge, MA, where ya can't pahk yah cah in Hahvahd Yahd, so some people try it in the adjoining underground bus station (there's also the problem on the MBTA's B Line trolley of people following their GPS's onto the tracks along Commonwealth Avenue or not figuring out how to follow the curve where both the tracks and the avenue curve in Allston).
posted by adamg at 6:44 AM on September 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

another, healthy, alternative :P
@BrentToderian: "These Dutch 'bicycle buses' are transporting 50+ kids getting the kind of exercise that leads to better learning, who DON'T need to be driven & dropped off by parents adding lots of local car traffic."
posted by kliuless at 7:47 AM on September 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Seems like the "guided" part is an unnecessary addition. Los Angeles has a few bus only things (they call them Bus Rapid Transit), and it's just a road only the transit buses can use. Adding some sort of captive system system to keep the bus on the path feels like a "high cost, low benefit" solution. Much cheaper to just have a road and to trust your drivers to know how to steer.
posted by sideshow at 10:27 AM on September 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

sideshow: "Los Angeles has a few bus only things (they call them Bus Rapid Transit), and it's just a road only the transit buses can use"

The article itself compares and contrasts the O-Bahn with BRT, pointing out some useful advantages of the O-Bahn over BRT.
posted by crazy with stars at 10:49 AM on September 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

The advantages in the article don't exist when compared to the Los Angeles BRT lines, besides a very few number of short stints where the buses temporary go back onto the regular roads, such as couple blocks inside Warner Center in the case of the Orange Line. LA doesn't implementing the fake BRT that is references, that's just regular ol' bus only lanes.
posted by sideshow at 11:12 AM on September 11, 2020

I lived in Adelaide when this was built. Sadly, we didn't live near any of the bus routes that used it, but I do remember going on an excursion to catch the o-bahn to Tea Tree Plaza. Tea Tree Plaza was an exciting outing for us, as we usually went to Colonnades or Marion if we were going to the mall.

A Thousand Baited Hooks - I had completely forgotten about Telstra phonecards!
posted by Kris10_b at 11:41 AM on September 11, 2020

I tried to find a Telecom one, but no luck.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:08 PM on September 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

I rode the BRT in Curitiba in its heyday, and it was awesome, even for a die-hard subway-riding new yorker. But apparently, BRT systems suffer similar (possibly inevitable) fates, hence the guided bus transit systems.
posted by rye bread at 8:06 PM on September 11, 2020

I haven't caught the O-Bahn for years but it was a huge thrill whenever I went on it as a kid. I remember learning that it was the longest system of its type in the southern hemisphere, or possibly the world - we weren't told that this was because barely anyone else bothered to have anything like it, so it all sounded very impressive.

There's an amazing entrance point where they've clearly just kept piling on NO ENTRY signs in a desperate and somehow still unsuccessful attempt to keep cars out.

(The article's implication that you have to pay for tickets as you board is misleading, I think - almost everyone on all Adelaide buses pays with a contactless Metrocard, and in fact cash payments aren't permitted at the moment due to pandemic restrictions. You do have to scan your card as you board the bus rather than eg on entering the station, which obviously slows things down compared to any rail systems where you validate on entry to the station.)
posted by severalbees at 10:57 PM on September 11, 2020

The guided part of the Cambridge one was so that they could fit it in the space taken up for by a train line, one that *listerally nobody* wanted removed, but the county council insisted. The cost was roughly 3x the estimate and several times more than the estimate for keeping the railway (which is, to be fair, just as unlikely that it would ever have come in on budget).

Perhaps the most annoying thing is that it ultimately ends up running on roads into the centre, presumably because converting the main line it joined into a concrete busway would have been frowned upon.

I've taken it. Precisely once.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 2:14 AM on September 13, 2020

I wonder why they couldn’t keep cars out by installing a gate that only lifts when it senses an RFID chip on the bus.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:05 AM on September 13, 2020

I commute regularly on the obahn (before the pandemic) and the guided part is what makes it great; it travels 100km/hr even in peak hours so it's quite fast, plus most of its distance is along the green belt of the local river so very calming too.

With the new extension under the entry to the CBD, it's 20 mins from the stop near my house to the busiest part of the city, including a change of buses at the interchange, whereas even moderate traffic means it's a 30 minute drive.

As to installing a gate, I believe the occasional car-on-track is due to someone following the bus closely in the belief it goes the best way to the city, maybe? On-phone GPS has reduced the incidences, now it just allows us brief schadenfreude at the - mostly Victorian - drivers, since they stole our Grand Prix. /s
posted by Marticus at 6:10 PM on September 13, 2020 [1 favorite]