thoss wrote:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 wrote:


On 25 Jan, 11:27, "Richard J." wrote:
The Labour deputy leader on the council was reported as
saying "This [the tram] is something which has been very unpopular and
we accept that it has been a major factor in our defeat. The public have
decided this for all of us and we need to move on."
This leads on to the interesting question - why do people in Ealing not
want the tram, whereas people in Peckham are quite keen on it? Is it:

a. Ealing has three tube stations plus two National Rail stations, and
feels that is adequate
b. Ealing residents are more likely to have cars than Peckham
residents, so the idea of road restrictions has more resonance for them
c. Peckham currently only has a couple of National Rail stations, so
its residents are looking forward to better services
d. The car lobby is more vocal in Ealing, and really there are no
differences in levels of support between Ealing & Peckham

or something else entirely?

Yes, something else. I'd love a tram, but the Uxbridge Road is quite
unsuitable for one.

I think this is a bit of a misnomer. It is true that the Uxbridge Road
is narrow in many places and so there is a lot of competition for road
space between motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and bus users.

However, any high capacity, high quality street public transport service
along this route is going to need more roadspace than is used now for
the conventional bus routes - otherwise it will be impossible to
maintain effective headways, and difficult to encourage some of the car
users to switch modes.

As far as I can see, there are only two ways to go with the Uxbridge
Road. Either more roadspace is taken away from private vehicles for
public transport (whether that is a tram or something else), or road
charging is introduced along it so that a very high articulated bus
frequency can operate.

However, there is a limit to the capacity you can get from such a bus
service without more infrastructure (at very high frequencies, buses
will need to be able to overtake each other easily). Longer vehicles
will be needed (longer than the current bendy buses) - and that brings
us right back to trams or tram-like technology (e.g. optically-guided
multi-articulated buses).

As for why Ealing doesn't want the tram but Peckham does, I would
combine higher car ownership and usage and a different attitude to
roadspace - oddly, much of the Cross River Tram route has more roadspace
available to it than does the West London Tram route, so battles over
roadspace are more hotly contested on the latter. I would say Inner
London residents are also much more used to the need to allocate
roadspace to public transport.

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

However, there is a limit to the capacity you can get from such a bus
service without more infrastructure (at very high frequencies, buses
will need to be able to overtake each other easily). Longer vehicles
will be needed (longer than the current bendy buses) - and that brings
us right back to trams or tram-like technology (e.g. optically-guided
multi-articulated buses).

As a daily user of the 207 or 607 route, I am obviously supportive of
the tram. However I have been surprised, when talking to people, about
the strength of local opposition. Moreover, the more I use the route,
the more I feel that some quite cheap measures (a few more bus lanes,
some prioritisation at lights, better management of the driving
schedules) could be put in place within 12 months to really speed up
the bus routes on the Uxbridge Road. I would suggest that the project
should be put on hold for 18 months while some other measures are
tried.

I have read again and again about the impossibility of putting more
buses on this route and I simply do not believe it to be true.

whos2091 wrote:
However, there is a limit to the capacity you can get from such a bus
service without more infrastructure (at very high frequencies, buses
will need to be able to overtake each other easily). Longer vehicles
will be needed (longer than the current bendy buses) - and that brings
us right back to trams or tram-like technology (e.g. optically-guided
multi-articulated buses).

As a daily user of the 207 or 607 route, I am obviously supportive of
the tram. However I have been surprised, when talking to people, about
the strength of local opposition. Moreover, the more I use the route,
the more I feel that some quite cheap measures (a few more bus lanes,
some prioritisation at lights, better management of the driving
schedules) could be put in place within 12 months to really speed up
the bus routes on the Uxbridge Road. I would suggest that the project
should be put on hold for 18 months while some other measures are
tried.

I have read again and again about the impossibility of putting more
buses on this route and I simply do not believe it to be true.

Perhaps not now; the whole point is to cater for future growth in both
car and public transport traffic. There are some extremely large
developments coming in Southall (gas works) and Shepherd's Bush (White
City), bringing both residential and employment growth along the corridor.

Whilst further bus priority measures might improve capacity now, there
is a practical limit to how frequently you can run buses along this
route. I suspect buses are *already* prioritised at some lights along
this route as part of the SCOOT traffic control system - however, users
often don't notice the prioritisation because it works by juggling green
time for each arm at the junction, rather than by always letting
approaching buses through without considering the queues building up on
the other arms of the junction.

An ultra-high bus frequency - to meet the demand predicted on this
corridor in 10-20 years' time - would need much more forceful signal
prioritisation to prevent excessive bunching-up of buses. In turn, that
prioritisation will cause big queues to build up on roads joining or
crossing the Uxbridge Road - which in turn will impact upon other bus
services in the area.

This is the same problem magnified for Cross River Tram. Bus-based
proposals for Cross River were ruled out because the higher frequency
required to deliver the same service was impossible to get across major
east-west routes in central London (Holborn for buses, Euston Road for
cars). I recall seeing mention of 60-80 buses per hour needed to meet
the demand, compared to 30-40 trams per hour.

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London