Busway blues

Brisbane's new Inner Northern Busway opened on May 19th. My bus route was one of those changed to use it.

The new cross-platform arrangement with trains at Roma Street is pretty neat (although the platform is the used once-a-day standard gauge platform).

Apart from that, I must say I am particularly underwhelmed by the changes.

Under the old system, my bus came down Countess Street, turned left at the lights onto Roma Street, stopped outside the station, continued along Roma Street, turned left at Turbot Street, right at Edward Street, stopping outside Central Station then left into Queen Street to a terminus outside the GPO.




Under the new route the bus runs down Countess Street, turns sharp left at Roma Street onto the busway on ramp (stop at lights) then up to the busway through route (stop at lights), turn right, stops at the Roma Street station, along the busway, into the left lane just short of King George Square station (stop at lights), turn right and out of busway onto Roma Street again, turn right (no signals) onto Roma Street slip road, left at Turbot Street and then as before to Central and the GPO.



Seeing as I get off at the Central Station stop, the whole deal has probably added 2-3 minutes to my trip in the morning.

There's no improvement in reliability either because the congested part of the bus route is Musgrave Road through Red Hill before you get to the city. Roma Street was never any problem.

Woo! Go BRT!

What is a metro - and does Brisbane need one?

On Wednesday I posted a set of pictures, and asked which ones were from a so-called 'metro' and which ones weren't.

This is what they were:

1. A high end 'light rail' system, the Tyne and Wear Metro
2. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the Berlin U-Bahn
3. Lightweight diesel railcars ('Pacers') from the West Yorkshire Metro
4. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the original Paris Metro
5. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the District Line of the London Underground
6. A high end 'light rail' system with city centre tunnel, the Docklands Light Railway (also in London)
7. A bus from the Adelaide metro (which also features some diesel railcars on a rather run-down railway network)

The Berlin and the two London examples aren't called 'metro'. All the others are. Looks can be deceiving!

(My offer of a half-mark was for recognising that the District Line began its life as the Metropolitan District Railway! I have also noticed that the Berlin U-Bahn web page refers to it in English as "metro". I don't recall hearing the term used in Berlin myself)

Obviously I picked this list for a point, and not just because they are all systems I have ridden on. The dictionary definition that is simply 'an underground railway like the one in Paris' isn't enough on its own: West Yorkshire and Adelaide don't have underground parts to their 'metro', and in London it's always 'the Underground' or more often 'the Tube', never 'the Metro'.

As a professional transport planner, I have had to deal with various demands for a 'metro' for Brisbane. When I sat down with a rail engineer we discovered that we had very different ideas about what defined a metro. He immediately thought big and bulky like the London Underground; I thought fast and flexible like DLR or Tyne and Wear. It was just what we were used to. What we agreed on, though, were:

• It's a railway
• It serves a city
• It offers a frequent service
• It is high capacity and probably has lots of standing room on board
  
• It has closely spaced stations for maximum coverage
• It is preferably designed with lots of doors for fast loading and unloading
• It serves in part a distribution function (not just a home-work commute function)
• It is a marketing term

We agreed that it would probably be underground for at least part of its route because this was the only way it would serve the inner city area. We also agreed that the Brisbane Citytrain system already shows many characteristics of a metro, and with improved vehicle design (for faster loading and unloading) and more frequent services (especially in the off peak) it probably ought to be called one.

What we also agreed upon was that Brisbane doesn't need a totally new independent underground rail line or loop of the London Underground or Paris Metro type: it simply doesn't have the population numbers or city size and shape to make it worth while. Certainly, any attempt to curtail Citytrain's operations at the city fringes and make people transfer to a metro for their final destination ('like London') is a very bad idea - and bad history to boot.

As the inner areas of Australia's capital cities increase in population through densification and urban renewal, there will be a need for improved public transport. Except for Melbourne (where the trams still have much potential) this is going to mean new dedicated facilities. I personally feel that there is much benefit in exploring the 'lightweight' metro of the Tyne and Wear or DLR model as a complement to the existing suburban railways, rather than trying to copy London or Paris.

Which of these is not a metro?

Metro appears to be the transport buzz word of the moment:

Brisbane Courier Mail:
Designer advises Brisbane to go underground for metro rail

Sydney Morning Herald:
Bye heavy rail, now for a north-west metro

The "Eddington Report" from Melbourne:
melbourne metro -‘new generation’ rail tunnel (warning PDF)

But what is a metro anyway?

The dictionary defines it as

metro

• noun (pl. metros) an underground railway system in a city, especially Paris.

So, quickly now, which of the following is doesn't have "metro" anywhere in its name? (I'll accept two or three in the answer)

1.


2. (please excuse gratuitous picture of me)


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


Answers next time - and with it some rational discussion on why it matters.

(for images 1, 4, and 6 I am indebted to Wikimedia Commons, and in particular photographers Chris McKenna and "Pline")