Because more buses on the roads can lead to congestion, we need busways to give the PT the edge. Again to attract patronage away from cars and onto PT by providing a better and faster door to door service. Many PT studies have concluded that one of the things that discourages PT use is the need for a transfer. A bus system can run direct routes without transfers when patronage is high (during rush periods), and has the flexibility to concentrate feeder services into a longer run when patronage is low (to save money).
Recent cost accounting measures an Adelaide passenger trip at $7 for a bus and 12.90 for a train. Remembering that most train trips involve a feeder bus trip, that's $7 or 14 for a bus (peak door to door or fed) compared to $12.90 to 19.90 for a train (station to station or bus fed).
You're comparing a train which has no choice whether to provide a door to door service to a busway where a choice in scheduling can be made. In off peak periods a fed shuttle mode makes sense, otherwise you can either run a lot of near empty buses all the way into the CBD or you can cut services all together. The former leads to higher costs the later leads to less patronage.frank1 wrote:True, but the O-Bahn isn't flawless either. The teatree plaza bound buses i.e 540's terminate at TTP and also in the city. So they act as a sort of train anyway. If you don't live near the O-Bahn, you need to catch a bus that drops you off at the interchange. You end up waiting for one of these 540's anyway, so there really isn't much difference. A train could easily act in the same manner as one of these 540 buses.
If you have the extra patronage an extra driver isn't a large cost. Also would all the patronage be coming from the same place? I doubt that. The only reason you have the need for extra capacity on a rail route is because buses are feeding the extra passengers to it, and transferring onto it. If it's busy enough why not run door to door services? I've read a few studies that have concluded that transfers frustrate passengers, that plus 10 minutes more travel time starts to make a car look attractive. Again if the potential patronage is there we need to attract it away from cars by providing a more convenient alternative. The times when transfers become unreliable is during peak periods where potential hold ups are more common, and the potential for more patronage exists.Will409 wrote:In addition, if you want to increase carrying capacity, you need to pile on extra buses which means extra bus drivers. If you had a heavy rail service, you just need to add an extra railcar. As for transfers, as long as the transfer times are reasonable (ie less then 10 minutes) and the services run close to time, I don't have a problem with them and nor to most other people (or atleast people I know, I obviously cannot speak for the entire population).
Again all that extra patronage isn't coming from one place. It's being fed into the stations from buses.Will409 wrote:What I was meaning was, if the capacity of say 2 railcars was reached on a certain run, it is possible via some re rostering of rollingstock to add an extra railcar to that same train making a 3 car set. Only if you wanted to increase the service frequency would you need an extra driver.
) to the tramline.