Source
r/transit•
JoshSimili

Why not drive buses on the opposite side of a median-aligned busway with island platforms?

Globally, the most common approach to a busway appears to be having then in between the two lanes of traffic of a major roadway, with an island platform serving both directions of travel. This reduces infrastructure cost and overall width of the system. But it necessitates buses with doors on the opposite side to the usual buses, so you need new buses.

To solve this, why not just run the entire busway system with the direction of travel swapped relative to the parallel roadway? So in countries that drive on the right, drive all the buses on the left lanes of the busway? Then you could use the same buses as usual.

Obviously for a BRT system where buses can leave the busway and operate on normal streets, this would necessitate an intersection where the buses swap direction of travel (similar to a diverging diamond interchange), so I can understand that being an issue. But many of the world's BRT systems don't do this precisely because the BRT bus fleet is so different from the local buses.

Does anybody know of any real-world systems that do this? EDIT: I think Istanbul's BRT system does this.

Posted Dec 29, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

1822
deathtopumpkins•

The El Monte Busway in Los Angeles runs like this for a while, specifically to allow buses to serve a single island platform at the LAC+USC Medical Center station:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Monte_Busway

11
JoshSimiliOP•

Oh, interesting, and swaps back over with flyover ramps just near Cal State LA station.

Typical LA to allow cars on it though.

5
Its_a_Friendly•

It is a charged toll lane though, so it's at least raising some useful revenue, I believe.

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the_clash_is_back•

Many bus systems have the driver operate other routes, have grade crossings, have some busses leave the route to join street traffic.

Switching sides can lead to confused drivers and lower safty

7
alexfrancisburchard•

Yes, Istanbul's Metrobüs does this, because we're cheap. But it works great. It's disorienting the first few times, normally when you walk onto a platform you walk to a certain side and expect vehicles to go a certain direction, but that's backwards. but you get used to it, and Metrobüs is epic.

​

Our mayors have talked about ending the "english system" and putting busses on the right side, but, like, why? why bother? There's clovers on the european side, and flyunders on the asian side to put busses on the wrong side of the road (bridge is in mixed traffic, busses have to stay on the right on the bridge), and outside of that 1.5km the busses travel on the left in their dedicated, barrier segregated busway.

​

For real tho - that double helix at zincirlikuyu coming from the asian side is murder when the bus is full. You feel like you're in Tokyo Drift, Bendy Bus Edition.

​

edit: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0665149,29.0136126,638m/data=!3m1!1e3

Here's zincirlikuyu, in it you can see Clover leafs, inside cloverleafs, inside clover leafs, and also the two extra bridges that serve as a bus depot / move busses to the center lanes on the West side. It's cloverception. Vallahi, clover leafs come up from underground, into other clovers, then rise up onto the bridge. Of course, before you hit the clovers coming from the east, there's a huge zig zag in the tunnel the busses end up in.

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Coming from the asian side it's like Bridge>>>>>>>^^>>> \/\/<<^^>>>>>Platform>>>\/\/<<<^^^^^^^>>>>>>>>Freeway lanes

5
UUUUUUUUU030•

This caused confusion in a Dutch policy paper about BRT on highways, where they used Metrobüs east of the Bosphorus bridge as an example for how to transition from median to shoulder running. But they didn't realise that Metrobüs runs on the left in the median, so when they showed with arrows on the satellite image how the directions would run, it didn't make sense at all and the arrows crossed over. They still published the image in the final version, but I can't find it unfortunately.

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alexfrancisburchard•

hahahaha yeah, it runs contraflow on both sides. It's only normal flow over the water.

4
pseudomota•

The one example I know of this is the original Pie IX busway in Montreal, which unfortunately closed permanently after a confused pedestrian looked the wrong way before crossing and was hit by a bus and died. Sad story. See the 1990s section here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_bus_rapid_transit

3
kalsoy•

While technically true, this can relatively easily be solved by clear paint and thick lines, possibly with a ribbon pattern that you can feel when crossing. You only easily crossover to the wrong side if there is no visual clue.

I have driven a right-hand side vehicle in left-hand side country and the only time I was confused was when driving on a narrow one-lane mountain road with switchbacks and passing places.

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JoshSimiliOP•

I suppose a contraflow busway would have to have all grade-separated pedestrian crossings then, so to avoid similar accidents.

2
aj2000gm•

Or obvious warning signs with signals. Did Montréal not have your standard pedestrian crossing signals back then? Big ol pedestrian crossings would be quite expensive when a piece of metal and/or the standard at dang near every major crosswalk in the would do.

5
kalsoy•

Busways of this style only make sense on large arterials where grade crossings are to be avoided anyway. In quieter streets, buses can use a normal bus lane or mixed line on the right-hand side.

For the few exceptions with contraflow dedicated busways, you could install railway-like crossings with moving barriers.

2
WikiMobileLinkBot•

Desktop version of u/pseudomota's link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_bus_rapid_transit

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1
WikiSummarizerBot•

Montreal bus rapid transit

Montreal bus rapid transit is a bus rapid transit service in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The original service was terminated in the 2000s, with a new network planned for the 2020s. The new network is planned to start operations starting 2022 on Pie-IX Boulevard.

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1
Federico987•

Metrobus 9 de Julio, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2
Schedulator•

Sydney's M2 motorway had s few of these bus stops where the buses crossover for the stop. But there are sections of the motorway where the buses travel with the other vehicles, so it wouldn't make sense to have them going in the reverse direction. see example here:

https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/DQLGVQVA2QAEWWGTDC2C3FMUAU5JWE5K0FJEXAQBN0NFWT4Q.jpg

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JoshSimiliOP•

Wow, just looking at the one at Oakes Rd right now on the map, and it literally just swaps direction for the island stop. That's really interesting, thanks!

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bluGill•

to do this safely you need to give the buses not just a lane, but a separated lane. Otherwise you will get head on collisions when a car drives into the bus lane. I lean to not want this because if a bus breakdowns the others can go into traffic to pass (though this depends on enforcing the bus only lanes - if police won't do that then you need to put up the barricades anyway)

Of course it is a trade off, but there are good points about going with the flow of traffic.

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JoshSimiliOP•

Yes, I was talking about busways, which in most of the world (aside from silly places like New York City) refer to a physically separated roadway for buses. For a simple BRT system with bus-only lanes, the safety concerns you raise would certainly preclude running the buses in a contraflow setup.

2
Robo1p•

Are the safety concerns really that much worse than any other bidirectional non-seperated road? I think a regular solid double yellow should do the job.

FWIW: It has been done before

1
bluGill•

Speed is a factor. The fastest bi-directional roads have a barrier of some sort between directions. When there is no barrier in general either speeds are slow, or there isn't much traffic. (historical practice was different and roads are still catching up to modern best practice)

Note, as the other replies make clear, this post was about grade separated BRT only, while I was thinking about a US style where they often use the far left lane of a freeway as buses only. In a pure BRT it might make sense to put BRT platforms in the middle and then run buses the opposite of normal traffic flow so that the same bus can leave the BRT and use side of the road bus stops (IE open BRT)

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SevenandForty•

Taipei almost had this; the platforms were in the middle of being built in the existing median to expedite the construction of bus lanes and reduce the amount of construction needed, but the city government and citizens rejected the plan due to concerns over safety and possibility of increased accidents, so the plan was scrapped before busses were actually run

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