West London Tram Proposal
On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 23:02:00 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:
The thing which bothers me about all this is that while you can make a lot
of theoretical arguments about the performance of high-quality bus routes
(using large, modern vehicles, fitted out with good furniture, exclusively
using prioritised bus lanes and busways, with relatively infrequent and
posh-looking stops and well-trained drivers - basically, a bus that looks
like a tram; what Clive calls Rapid Transit on Rubber Tyres), nobody's
really tried it, so there isn't any hard data.
There is one in Ottawa, with a dedicated busway from the city centre
to the out-of-town railway station (and beyond, but I didn't venture
further). The buses are trying to be trams, but the dedicated roads
are wider than a tramway would be. They run on normal roads in the
centre.
There is also a short light-rail-esque DMU-operated branch railway
into the suburbs from a not-quite-interchange with the buses outside
the city centre. All a bit odd.
In France there are some guided trolleybus things. One had a lot of
teething problems, but it is supposedly now fixed.
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK
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