Comment 114590

By mdrejhon (registered) - website | Posted November 03, 2015 at 13:35:54 in reply to Comment 114571

"BRT" vs "express bus", either is better than no transit enhancement to freeway widening. Let's ignore the marketing terminology for the moment. (Technically I agree with Ryan on what constitutes "BRT", but unfortunately it's a delicate game of compromise).

Hopefully sanity wins. But let's say, imagine, RHVP/LINC widening becomes unavoidable and Mountain eagerly agrees to funded improved transit piggybacked on the widening. So making a compromise lemonade out of lemons:

And actually, there's space at some of them when done creatively:

  • Temporary taper-down the width of leftmost shoulder lanes where the median bus stations are. Basically left shoulder can briefly become only 2 meter wide for the length of the BRT station. This transfers shoulder space to platform space. Strong bus station walls protect the median station. Right-hand shoulder is unaffected.
  • Put covered bus stations adjacent to the bridge (in front or past it) to avoid the bridge pillar space-vs-platform competing-space issue. Buses would only go around pillar immediately after leaving median bus station. That way, platform widths don't compete for space with the bridge pillar.
  • If absolutely necessary, very, very slight minor outwards sideways lane shift (about ~1-2 meters) for the remainder of lanes. This frees up 2-4 meters of width for the bus station.

At any random point along the whole LINC, there's enough median space for a bus station if you do the above. It looks tight, but there's actually 4.5 lanes of freeway width when you observe the extremely wide left shoulder lanes and the width of median allowing for a very wide median barrier that has room for mega-streetlamps (which isn't required inside the bus stations). That's more than enough space for 2 lanes of bus plus reasonable platform width (less than 1 lanewidth per platform).

Combined temporarily reduced shoulder width only for station length (~4 extra meters) and outward tapered outwards sideways freeway lane shift (total ~2-4 extra meters) so slight that it is not very noticeable to cars, would free up plenty of space (6-8 meters) needed the median bus station platforms that are about 3 meters wide, plus the necessary strong station walls separating freeway traffic from the bus station. In fact, we don't even need platforms that deep if the station layout is good, dry and safe.

While it looks tight, it's certainly doable. I'm pointing out there's indeed space for median bus stations. You'd still have 3 lanes (including HOV) going past both sides of the bus stations. The bus platforms don't need to be very wide especially if you have overhead cover that spans the station. This keeps the road dry, avoiding splashes. The outwards tapered lane shifting may not even be needed, if the whole station is covered and immediately adjacent to bridge.

The alternative simpler option (parclo stations) is not enough of a transit enhancement as a required attached condition on freeway widening, and would necessitate buses trying to fight traffic, with ramps/HOV lanes on opposite sides of the freeway. Besides, who want to wait at suburban parclo stations in the winter, feeling the wind of cars passing by on a wet road, when we can have a few simple covered median stations keeping the wind/wetness out, and a few simple push-button operated overhead infrared heaters (like GO uses) or even enclosed heated mini-rooms at one end of the platform (elevator/stairs end).

We only need maybe four or five small median bus transfer interchanges at strategic underpasses, this isn't a megaproject... Most of the cost would be the additional buses, which we need anyway!

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-11-03 14:59:25

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds