Article - Govt ponders Main North Road bus lane

[SurfRail]

Gee, some common sense... Stobie poles and FUIC must magnify brain power or something, let's get in on the act!

http://indaily.com.au/news/2013/09/23/govt-ponders-main-north-road-bus-lane/

Govt ponders Main North Road bus lane   
Liam Mannix | 23 September 2013 

A dedicated bus lane in the centre of Main North Road has been considered by the State Transport Department in a bid to get public transport commuters to the city faster.

But the department looks set to prefer option B – rerouting some city bus services from the northern suburbs so they no longer travel to the city down Main North Road and through North Adelaide.

Instead, the buses would terminate at Mawson Lakes train station, where commuters would switch from the bus to the train.

The option has been flagged by a senior public transport official, who says the department's current system of running bus routes parallel to train lines is inefficient.

Bill Fragoulis, executive director of Public Transport Services at the Department of Planning Transport and Infrastructure, told a public transport forum last week his team had considered the single mid-road bus lane because Main North Road wasn't wide enough to convert the far left and far right lanes to bus priority lanes.

"There has been thought of a bus priority lane traveling in the big (to-city) direction down the centre of Main North Road, because Main North Road doesn't lend itself to putting the bus priority lane in, it'll stop car movement," he said.

"Main North Road from Stop 17 Sefton Park ... is where you start to hit trouble I think. And then you get to O'Connell Street and it's just gridlock."

The north-south bus routes have been a continual problem for the Department and for Transport Services Minister Chloe Fox. Only 69.5 per cent of buses on the northern-suburbs-to-city route ran on time, according to the last bus performance figures.

Fragoulis's long-term plan to solve the problem is to re-route many of those buses to feed into the train line instead of running into the city.

"Ideally, what I'd like to see, when electrification eventually gets out to Gawler or Elizabeth, I want to minimise the number of services on Main North Road.

"I think you can feed buses into Mawson Lakes. A Mawson Lakes express trip to the city on a train is a hell of a lot quicker than sitting on a bus.

"At the moment we run parallel bus services to all train lines – hardly an efficient way of operating.

"The plan is, when lines like Noarlunga come back, we're going to take these long parallel-running services and make them into high frequency suburban services to feed the rail line.

"That's the plan with all rail lines as they come back – sweating the asset so to speak, that's our intention."

A train trip from Mawson Lakes interchange to the city takes around 17 minutes. The same trip by bus takes around 55 minutes.

The State Government is currently working to electrify the Seaford and Tonsley train lines and part of the Gawler line.

The bus feeder strategy has been attempted before – to poor results, Fragoulis said.

"In 2008 we attempted to put all buses on the Gawler Line into the train line. It was a really good concept, but we were overwhelmed with passengers, we were starting to leave people behind.

"But the trip itself was very quick. I think we did it too quickly, and we didn't have the rail cars to be able to deliver the service. I think when we do it this time we will have thought it out."

A draft of the State Government's integrated transport plan is expected to be released this year.

[ozbob]

... The option has been flagged by a senior public transport official, who says the department's current system of running bus routes parallel to train lines is inefficient. ...

^ Hey banana benders, even the crow eaters get it ..