Evidence on performance

Case study 1: Edinburgh’s Greenways

Edinburgh's Greenways provide segregated lanes for buses throughout the working day. They are constantly patrolled by a dedicated enforcement team and an illegal parker is 15 times more likely to encounter a warden on a Greenway than on a conventional bus lane. The buses typically arrive at 12-minute headways and there are high quality bus shelters with comprehensive bus information.

A comparative study (Scottish Executive, Report number 83) of two Greenways corridors - the 6.7km long A8 and the 2.2km long A900 – and the conventional bus only lanes along a 3km length of the A7/A701 corridor showed:

• Journey times – both Greenways and conventional lanes protected buses from the congestion that affected other traffic.
• Reliability – there was a notable improvement on the A8, but the conventional corridor did not show any obvious changes over the same period.
• Bus use - approximately 11% of passengers on Greenways said they used the bus more, but 7% claimed to use it less.
• Traffic volumes - decreased slightly on both Greenways corridors (between 4-10% outbound) after 1-2 years of implementation.

Contribution to objectives

Case study 2: West Midlands Bus Showcase

The West Midlands Bus Showcase concept was developed to deliver a step change to bus services and make them more attractive to new users, particularly motorists. Routes have bus priority (including segregation, selective vehicle detection and signal control) and other features including high frequency services, attractive waiting environments at stops, real time information and strict enforcement of stopping restrictions.

Line 33 Birmingham to Pheasey was the first Showcase scheme to be introduced in 1997. Birmingham City Council and the passenger transport executive Centro spent £2.9 million on infrastructure, and operator Travel West Midlands invested £1.2 million in new buses. More routes have been completed including Superline 301.

The impacts of the showcase measures vary between routes, but they have achieved increases in bus patronage of 10-30%, and a 5 per cent (of bus patronage) mode shift from the car i.e. new passengers from car have increased bus patronage by 5% (http://www.pteg.net downloadable PDF). Increased bus patronage and increased numbers of mobility impaired passengers have increased bus boarding times and offset some of the potential reduction in journey times. The Superline, for example, has seen patronage increase by 22% (13% of these were former car users) and peak direction journey times fall by 9% in the AM peak and 4% in the PM peak. (www.centro.org.uk/handbook/index.htm)

Contribution to objectives

Case study 3: A47 Hinckley Road, Leicester

Bus lanes have been introduced over 4.5km of the A47 Hinckley Road in Leicester. The lanes operate 24 hours and provide almost continuous priority in the inbound direction and at congestion hot spots in the outbound direction. They have red surfacing and can be used by cyclists and taxis.

The county council's automatic traffic counters on the A47 recorded similar levels of overall traffic before and after the introduction of the bus lanes; weekday inbound flows increased by 6% between October 1997 and May 1998, while outbound flows reduced by 2%. However, during the morning peak hour, flows on Hinckley Road fell by 17% (from 1,100 to 910) in the inbound direction and there was a similar reduction of 150 vehicles during the evening peak in the outbound direction.

The bus priority measures had a minimal effect on car journey times; during the morning peak they dropped by 5% in the inbound direction and during the evening peak they increased by 2% in the outbound direction. But there were significant improvements in bus journey times; a 22% drop in the AM peak (from 23 to 18 minutes) and 23% in the evening. Limited stop park and ride buses can cover the distance to and from the city centre nearly one and a half minutes faster than a car.

Contribution to objectives

Other evidence

Bus priority measures can improve the public image of buses, encouraging more people to use services, and improve the use of road space.

Daugherty (Daugherty, 1999) examined a number of bus priority schemes in the UK. The journey time improvements achieved by the schemes were of less than five minutes which was relatively small in comparison to the overall journey length. Nonetheless, a scheme in Brighton achieved a 16% increase in patronage through a combination of bus priority and an introduction of a flat fare. The Aberdeen scheme generated a 1.4% increase in patronage, from a combination of new travellers and increased trip rates of previous travellers.

Introduction of a bus priority scheme in north-east London (Route 43) along with a red route scheme which aims to keep traffic moving by restricting parking and stopping, resulted in journey time savings and improvements in the reliability of the route. Patronage on the route increased by 8.8%, to 8700 passenger journeys per week (Thomson 1993). Over the same period London wide bus patronage fell by 2%.

The London Bus Initiative (LBI), implemented between 2000 and 2003, covered 27 high-frequency bus routes. The goals of the programme were:

• To increase patronage;
• to make improvements benefiting the whole route; and
• make buses the mode of first choice on LBI routes.

The project cost $105 million over three years which consisted of $19 million for enforcement, $50 million for traffic engineering, $6 million for bus operations $16 million for programme support and $15 million for major projects.

There was a significant reduction in waiting times and slight reduction in travel times at a time when networkwide traffic congestion was increasing. The increase in patronage of 21.9% is likely to represent a significant improvement in service levels. Some of the new passengers are likely to have come from car may have reduced overall congestion levels.

An important element in any bus priority scheme is enforcement to ensure that buses are not impeded by other vehicles. London was the first part of the UK to introduce decriminalised parking and bus lane enforcement using parking attendants and cameras. The offence of driving in a bus lane became a civil rather than a criminal offence and liable for a penalty charge notice (PCN). The penalty charge was set at £80, but has since been increased to £100. There has been a drop in the number of PCNs issued - down by 80% in some areas – and buses were able to travel faster in bus lanes.

Bus operators First and Yorkshire Terrier set up an enforcement trial in Sheffield with South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE). They paid for extra police motorcycle patrols during peak periods and motorists were warned through a media campaign that driving in a bus lane would result in a fixed penalty notice (FPN). The trial ran from April to June 2001. At the start of the trial there were poor levels of compliance, however, a very significant reduction in the number of FPNs issued took place over the trial period, with 82 per cent fewer tickets issued in June than in April. Importantly, one operator reported that lost mileage fell by 60 per cent overall, with the other reporting a drop of 45 per cent. Lost mileage is defined as scheduled miles minus operating miles. The latter is affected by traffic lost miles (e.g. congestion delays) and operating lost miles (e.g. driver shortage and vehicle breakdown). Both operators also found that they kept to scheduled journey times better and more consistently. The conclusions drawn from the trial were:

• effective enforcement is essential to bus priority;
• the initial level of FPNs more than paid for the cost of additional policing, so in theory the trial would have been self-funding. However, as more motorists comply with bus lanes, the rule of diminishing returns applies;
• enforcement was essential during peak hours, but more enforcement was needed at other times of the day to maintain standards; and
• enforcement was perceived as fair to all road users.
• ensuring the long term enforceability of measures, including self-enforceability and active enforcement, possibly using cameras; and
• consideration of the concerns and needs of frontagers and provision of acceptable measures.

Transit speeds had been dropping over the previous two decades resulting in reduced ridership and higher operating costs, necessitating service cuts which in turn reduced ridership still further. In response the San Francisco transit authority installed a network of bus-only lanes on many streets in the downtown core.

The implementation of these lanes has not achieved the speed and reliability benefits hoped for. It is thought that this is largely due to traffic in the bus lanes impeding the buses. According to the San Francisco Transportation Authority more than one quarter of vehicles violate the bus-only Lane in the Civic Centre area on Market Street during the day and more than 60% of vehicles violate the outbound bus-only Lane in the PM peak hour. The reasons for the high level of bus lane violation are set out below:

• Insufficient enforcement;
• bus lane is of a similar colour to the rest of the highway and the symbol, a diamond, that is used to denote that the lane is bus-only is known throughout California as the symbol for a carpool lane (although "bus only" is also painted on the bus lane surface);
• there is a great deal of variety in operating hours of different bus lanes leading to confusion amongst drivers; and
• inconsistent signage guidelines across the city.

Contribution to objectives

It should be noted that the schemes described are, in several cases, a combination of bus priority, service quality improvements and marketing. It is therefore not possible to identify the impact of bus priority on bus patronage specifically. More generally it is clear that effective enforcement and ease of understanding are important elements in an effective scheme.