The end of the mis-guided busways?
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Could this be the beginning of the end for the expensive and unnecessary mis-guided busway on York and Selby Roads?When the route was finally opened, at great expense, Worst and Arriva purchased brand new buses complete with the necessary guide wheels to operate their services on these roads.Of course anyone who has travelled these roads will know that most of the route is actually plain old fashioned bus lane that buses from any company can use, without modifications. Metro have never managed to advise successfully why the expensive guided bit was actually needed, other than as a white elephant.Anyway, Arriva have recently had some brand new single deckers delivered and they are all liveried up for the routes 163 and 166 which previously used the mis-guided busway. Except these new "09" reg'd buses don't have the guide wheels fitted and are just travelling on the normal carriageway, avoiding the guided bit all together.Have Arriva pulled the plug on this farce? Is the busway destined to prove to be yet another expensive bit of kit installed by Metro for Worsts benefit?
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I sincerley hope it is the end of the 'fob Leeds folk off with cheap gimmick guided bus way'I've travelled on those buses, they have to go slow as they get speed wobble and bounce from side to side.While going slow in the guided bus lane you can sit back, relax and watch all the other traffic (including buses that don't use it) fly past you at twice the speed.Great stuff
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Ever come up York Road in the rush hour? Dedicated bus lane upto Killingbeck and then a bus lane from Asda to the old Hospital entrance. Busses have to give way when leaving the buslane at the traffic lights - neat trick - pull out into the general carrageway (whether it's safe or not quite often) and mis the give way!There is a bus stop outside Asda on the bus lane and another one with its own little pull-in layby opposite Seacroft Hospital. In someon's wisdom, a further stop was added inbetween these two, on the carrage way just after the traffic lights, presummably to ease the walk to the new housing by 90seconds and of course, bringing half the traffic on the A64 to a halt whilst it does so! Logical? - to someone I suppose
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The York road guided busway is the very one i've been on Chameleon
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Must just be brief here, as the thought of all these zany and expensive ideas gets me all het up !!First of all the end of the old tram system in 1959, regrettable though it was, at least removed the nonsense of folks having to reach the middle of a busy road to board. Now intending passengers have an entertaining little conundrum - does my service pull up at the pavement, or is it "guided" in the middle of the road ?? I have serious misgivings about the safety of the "guided" system and incidents have occurred in various places, including York Road, where buses have "climbed out" of the channel and caused damage. When the York Road system was being completed Arriva at Selby depot had buses fitted with guide wheels for the York - Selby - Leeds services. Rough justice ensured common sense there, because the high kerbless grass verges on the narrow road between Sherburn and the A1 ripped the silly little contrivances off, thereby settling that bit of the argument before it started !!Proof of the contra and sensible viewpoint has recently come into use on Burley Road (westbound). For quite minimal cost a splendid "buses only" lane has been built between Westfield Road and Willow Road - a distance of at least a quarter of a mile. This has immediately rescued buses from a crawl of at least a quarter of an hour at busy times with the absolute minimum of delay to other traffic - priority traffic lights allowing the buses to rejoin Burley Road proper near Cardigan Road but only when necessary. The system is a pleasure and a relief to behold and has worked brilliantly without a hitch from day one. NO silly guide wheels, NO expensive and very unsightly troughs in the road, NO boarding away from the safety of the pavement - will someone in authority please look and listen ??
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I've never really understood the whole guided bus idea. I may be missing something, but I just don't get it. Originally, I thought the idea was that the buses were quite literally guided, so that a single driver/operator could take fares whilst on the move, but soon realised this would be highly dangerous, unless they were fenced off!Guides bus CONS: expensive, unsightly, litter-magnet, slow, potentially dangerous bus stops, takes up a lot of space.Guided bus PROS: Err...?
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Si wrote: I've never really understood the whole guided bus idea. I may be missing something, but I just don't get it. Originally, I thought the idea was that the buses were quite literally guided, so that a single driver/operator could take fares whilst on the move, but soon realised this would be highly dangerous, unless they were fenced off!Guides bus CONS: expensive, unsightly, litter-magnet, slow, potentially dangerous bus stops, takes up a lot of space.Guided bus PROS: Err...? And when one breaks down mid-transit...... That's fun to watch
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The only rationale I can see behind the guided busways is to give First advantages on their routes. Leeds has got off fairly lightly in comparison to other places: in Cambridge the council cancelled a light rail system and built busways on part of the route, including some of the old trackbed which would have been used for light rail, and has now been lost to it for the forseeable future. In Edinburgh, Lothian region paid out for guided busways on the airport route outside of the city even while the tram system was under development. Busways make the cost of entry to bus routes that have them higher. The guides are a considerable cost on top of regular rolling stock so new companies will think twice about attempting to offer services on routes that include busways.First is very good at promotion and influencing decision makers, which has put it in the position it's in. The decision makers, for their part, don't ride on buses and don't comprehend that all that bus users want is a reliable, regular service, and believe First when it dangles shiny things like bus routes and ftr in front of them, none of which provide any advantage except to First themselves, who, as is now being proved with National Express on the railways. will walk away from services when the business declines, or running begging for subsidies.
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Si wrote: I've never really understood the whole guided bus idea. I may be missing something, but I just don't get it. Originally, I thought the idea was that the buses were quite literally guided, so that a single driver/operator could take fares whilst on the move, but soon realised this would be highly dangerous, unless they were fenced off!Guides bus CONS: expensive, unsightly, litter-magnet, slow, potentially dangerous bus stops, takes up a lot of space.Guided bus PROS: Err...? I've never understood the rationale behind them either. But it's not just Leeds that has them in West Yorkshire - there's one up Manchester Road in Bradford.
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