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First look at Liverpool’s new ‘glider’ bus
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Tbf, there is a place in public transit infrastructure for busses. Trains are great, but there are routes out there that would be impractical to serve with a full size train or inefficiently expensive to build out tram rails for, but which a bus can serve effectively.
We have the South Lake Union Railcar in Seattle. Nobody rides it. And like I’m not one to blame infrastructure, but you can literally walk faster than it moves. Meanwhile there are shitloads of buses with plenty of ridership. Many fully electric with overhead wire.
Meanwhile bicyclists routinely get their wheels caught in the tracks and eat it.
I can’t imagine the efficiency of rail makes much difference in a city environment. The best argument I’ve heard for rail is that it’s more a commitment to developers that the route won’t be changed any time soon.
Light rail is almost always more energy efficient, more cost effective, safer, offers a smoother ride, requires less maintenance, and it can be fully automated.
Lots of major cities outside of the US have had great success using light rail. I have no idea how Seattle managed to fuck it up
the secret american sauce of corruption where they spend the money, got nothing to show for it and public just gets to pay the clean up cost for failure
the main argument I see for rail is that it doesnt get stuck in car traffic, which should make it easier to keep to a reliable schedule and speed, and that it can have a higher capacity per vehicle. Those would seem to indicate that it should be better than busses for routes that are very busy, provided of course that the rail infrastructure is actually good (able to do a reasonable speed, have reasonable reliability, and separated from other modes of transit to as to not cause conflicts at crossings). If your trains are so slow you can beat them by walking, and directly cross the roads and bike paths, then its not trains as a concept that are the problem, its that you have rather bad trains.
The rail car in question is not grade separated.
It doesn't need to be if you enforce the rules very stirctly at first using both officers on the ground and cameras to fine drivers who think they can just slip into the lane for a bit. Repeat offenders get stricter fines and even impoundment.
You could go one step further and not let cars on the tram line at all without grade seperation. You could do this by building dedicated seperate lanes for the trams or by not including any adjacent car lanes at all. And of course all of this should be done with transit signal priority to reduce the time they waste at red lights and help keep the tram on time with its schedule.
Does your tram get stuck in traffic or something? Why is it that slow?
I don't know much about trams but I kinda feel like that's not supposed to happen.
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Lake_Union_Streetcar
I don't think anyone's arguing for no busses. It's more like not only busses.
For long term investment the tram wins out in energy efficiency. If you want the next politician in power to easily be able to remove transit, the bus wins.
By building a tram line you cement into the city that it is now a transit corridor. The city can then develop more densely if needed to increase ridership or make the area more catered to pedestrians.
how is this glider any different from a regular bus?
is this where this thing being deployed?
all i see propaganda of some Liverpool based bureaucrat buying shit with taxpayer money. Is this actually beneficial?
From the look of it, its is a regular bus, it just looks to have a low floor tram-like design. Which doesnt make it not a bus, but might make it a bit more pleasant to ride.