"History will be kind to us, because we will write it"
Chief Minister Stanhope has announced a study into sorting out the ever more congested Northbourne Avenue.
He seems to be leaning towards a major bus station (and one imagines car park) in Dickson to shuttle people into the City.
Consulting firm URS has been appointed to conduct the study, which will cover the section of Northbourne Avenue from Flemington Road to the City. Also included in the study is an investigation of a bus station in Dickson to increase the uptake of public transport.
Mr Stanhope said URS would work closely with the National Capital Authority to identify the nationally significant characteristics of the corridor. The study will protect and enhance these characteristics while delivering improved reliability, more efficient bus services and a dedicated cycling route.
“The study is due for completion in the third quarter of this year and will involve targeted consultation with community representatives, community councils and key interest groups,” Mr Stanhope said.
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LIGHT RAIL!!!!!!! FFS Give us light rail!!
Athryn said :
Northbourne avenue is probably the only place Light Rail would be a great success. Definitely worth putting it in, and extending it to Gungahlin via Flemington Road. Not many other areas where population is heavy enough to justify it.
Convert outside lanes of Northbourne to dedicated bus lanes… GO! Line marking would take about two weeks tops.
Better yet, if Stanhope won’t give us light rail, at least pave a big ol’ runway straight down the median strip of Northbourne and run the busses like Melbourne trams. Stops at each intersection and no conjestion to worry about.
Tony Gill told the GCC meeting on Wednesday that they are considering putting a cycleway down the centre median, but can’t put a bus lane there because the brainwaves in the NCA over the years (and even just last year) allowed the spooks, telcos and ever other mob with a backhoe to lay cables and other crap down the middle.
They are looking then to retain the 3 traffic lanes in each direction, and widen the existing cycle lanes outwards to form a 4th lane each way for bus/transit. It was raised that they wouldn’t be very fast transit lanes if people are stuck behind bus stops, but Tony conceded they’d only work if there were bays off to the side at bus stops – as there should have been now anyway, I would have thought.
joingler said :
So no one lives south of the lake?
Convert outside lanes of Northbourne to dedicated bus lanes… GO! Line marking would take about two weeks tops.
God no !!! the traffic would bank up to Hall insteqad of just the Racecourse.
I’d be happy if they just made an effort to synchronise the traffic lights a bit better. Then again, I only drive down Northbourne a couple of times a month (for good reason).
Fair call about the median being unsuitable for a bus lane, but a cycleway is another perfectly good (and logical) use for the area. In fact this should have been done instead of the suicycle lanes they’ve painted on the verge.
I would object to the 4 lane/transit proposal on the basis that it does nothing to discourage commuters from using the road – which is the heart of the problem. The solution needs to be something that offers enough encourangement for people to ditch their cars in favour of buses/bikes.
For mine that solution is 2 lanes of traffic and a dedicated bus lane (and bays) – T2/T3 lanes are only useful when constantly policed.
Oh, and I suspect the reasons there are currently no bus bays are twofold:
1) There are often several buses nose-to-tail travelling down Northbourne, so the bays would have to be rediculously long in order to be fit for purpose.
2) Without a bus lane, if a bus entered the bay it would have difficulty re-entering the flow of traffic (esp. in peak times).
Keijidosha said :
You’ve not experienced the courtesy of an Action bus driver changing lanes then have you? Aside from the fact that the law states cars must make way for a bus exiting a bus stop, those drivers are bat shit crazy and will pull across in front of anything.
Athryn said :
Why? A dedicated bus transit corridor would be more flexible, much cheaper and more effective than light rail. Give them right of way and whatnot like Melbournes trams…but they don’t actually need to be trams.
Easy fix:
Build Monash Drive.
Athryn said :
How many more studies does stranglehope need to tell him that this city needs a light rail system between major centres.
“Targeted consultation” = those who will agree with stranglehope.
Keijidosha said :
I agree and it’s very common to do this on busy multi-lane roads in Europe. It does take some planning around intersections though. Most of the road would be ok as there are seperate lanes and lights to turn right and the latter are seperate from the lights to go straight ahead. This is not the case for the whole road though. Think about Braddon and Civic. The way the intersections there work now, the bicycle light could only go green there when all the other lights are red.
Still, even if it doesn’t go all the way down to Civic, it would still be a major improvement.
Seperate bus lanes on busy roads is also a tactic used all over Western Europe to get people out of their cars and onto the bus. But again, it’s not as straightforward as it may seem when it comes to intersections. You would need to allow cars onto the bus lane to turn left for example.
And totally agree with the need to synchronise the lights! They used to be – for a very short time – years ago and what a difference that makes. They are so far behind on traffic planning here compared to the majority of the first world… Synchronising lights makes a huge difference to traffic flow.
+ 1 for a light rail. If Mr Stanhope wants a ‘big Canberra’ time to start planning for a genuine infrastructure upgrade which includes public transport which does not rely on existing roads.
A bus station in Dickson will require a major upgrade to parking/traffic improvement etc for an already car-saturated disaster zone. In the meantime, why not utilise the parking available in the Exhibition Park/Racecourse areas and have the park & ride start there? Free parking might encourage people to ditch the car. Nothing else will entice people onto buses in Canberra.
Buzz2600 said :
We started campaigning for this idea in 2008, and last year the ACT Government agreed. It is now in the works. It will need the Morriset Road rebuild to be done to give the access to the back EPIC carparks – from Federal Hwy as well as Flemington Rd.
Athryn said :
There were enough complaints on here recently about the tax payer subsidy for Action Buses. If light rail came in that subsidy would probably increase substantially. The increase would be on top of the $2 billion (according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report) that light rail would cost to build. While light rail is a nice idea, the ACT doesn’t have the population and is to spread out to make it a viable option.
So explain to me again why I would get up, get in the car, drop the kids at school, drive through the congestion to epic, get out park the car, wait for a bus, pay $3 a day for the priviledge, get out at civic, catch another bus to Barton and them repeat on the way home every day. Would add at least 2 hours to my daily commute.
Clearly the best way to improve Northbourne ave is to get the bikes and busses off it and let the traffic flow. a bus station in Dickson sending the busses dowen an alternative route to civic could work but it would need some analysis of the best route. maybe express down Cowper st/Limestone Ave.
shadow boxer said :
The problem with this sort of reply is that you figure everyone has to respond the same. Cannot you conceive that if PT is a heap better for a lot more people, then people such as yourself who find it too hard will instead benefit from less congested roads? Therefore should not the rational position from you be to wholeheartedly support any and all PT improvements?
Snave81 said :
Not quite and only part of the picture. The PWC cost-benefit analysis showed the total cost if the whole bloody light rail network were built up front (which would never happen) would be $1.6B. It went on to show a benefit return in reduced road and other costs plus increased benefits of $2.6B. So a net benefit of $1B. And that included the rail operational expenses. Toss in the FACT that the PWC terms of reference precluded them from including in the benefit column the increased rate and land sale revenues. My guesstimate – another half billion easy.
So what we were left with was – correct me if I’m wrong – an analysis that essentially says if the ACT MLAs DON’T go ahead with it, then they are financially mismanaging the budget.
shadow boxer said :
Of course! Because the 14 lane freeways in California that turn into parking lots during peak hour have proven that more cars will solve traffic congestion issues.
You need the benefits of a public transport solution explained to you? Here goes:
The ACTION Redex service already goes from EPIC to Barton without changeover. At present it is crippled by the traffic on Northbourne. Construct a dedicated transport corridor and the trip would take about 15-20 minutes, tops. Plonk a football field-size carpark near Mitchell and connect it to some major arterial roads to avoid congestion. Make parking free for bus users or package it into a discounted payment structure.
Whether you feel such a service would be worth $5.50 a day is up to you, but it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Does anyone remember the glorious day when the bus drivers were on strike and Northbourne flowed like a slippery slide in high summer with 2 bottles of dishwashing liqud thrown on it down a rather large hill…Northbourne is the least of the congestion problems IMO.
Or get some of the big agencies out of the city centre.
Another waste of money report to tell us what we already know and is already information filed in a big green binder in the ACTPS cupboard. More buses and more cars on roads equals more congestion. Ask Sydneysiders.
Another study? How many does it take? I thought there was an American guy about two years ago who was going to solve all our bus problems and the Gungahlin Civic Route was right up there. Looks like the Chief bought another 76 trombones. It now takes 40 minutes to get to Civic from close in parts of Gungahlin if you leave home for the bus at 7:20. Connect to Parkes or barton and that’s an hour each way every day.
The buses are now working about as slowly as they could with queues to get off as well as queues to get on after the revolutionary MyWay system.
Can’t wait to see the latest “options” in the next report.
Have to agree with the Chief that the only way to fix the road congestion is to eliminate parking in Civic and skyrocket the price for what is left. Shame about all those shops going broke but someone has to pay I guess.
Better public transport really is the only solution to this problem. Even if you were to magically build an elevated express road above Northbourne that was 8 lanes wide and ran at freeway speeds straight from Gungahlin through to the city, it still doesn’t fix the parking problems or the fact that the streets in the city centre are pretty clogged with cars as it is.
As Keijidosha points out, the experience of the Americans (who have a lot more money to spend on road infrastructure than Australia by the way) is that more roads just encourages more people to drive, and you end up with horrible congestion anyway.
Dedicated bus lanes with a park and ride facility at EPIC sounds excellent to me, I’m not sure why you’d locate it at Dickson. Of course a rail based system is really what we should be aiming for.
That’s a great photo for showing that removing the bike lane would do nothing – still 3 lanes.
You need the benefits of a public transport solution explained to you? Here goes:
The ACTION Redex service already goes from EPIC to Barton without changeover. At present it is crippled by the traffic on Northbourne. Construct a dedicated transport corridor and the trip would take about 15-20 minutes, tops. Plonk a football field-size carpark near Mitchell and connect it to some major arterial roads to avoid congestion. Make parking free for bus users or package it into a discounted payment structure.
Whether you feel such a service would be worth $5.50 a day is up to you, but it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Well you do need to apply a bit of brain power.
The busses already have a dedicated lane, they pull in and out of the bus stops with a total right of way, the only people inconvenienced are the traffic chaos behind them. Even a dedicated commute lane would be lucky to make 4 or 5 minutes difference and would still have to stop at every traffic light and for every bus that stops in front of it.
You might be lucky and pull a couple of hundred people onto the busses, but the traffic remaining will now be funneled down two lanes. More rat running, more congestion, better to just get rid of them off the main road and onto the back streets.
Most people having made it as far as epic will just continue to rat run Ainslie.
I think everyone should use public transport, go on, everyone use it. Because then when I drive to work, I wont have to look for a car park, or get held up by traffic, GLORIOUS!
You want another reason? How about we make it so places the Canberra Centre and other “Public car parks” have to compete for business by lowering there fee’s, not by raising them steadily because people have to use them.
Light Rail would be good, using it to run between the major centres, Gungahlin to Civic, Belconnen to Civic, Belconnen to Gungahlin, Woden to Tuggeranong etc. Then ACTION could focus on just running people from the suburbs to the rail stations, they couldn’t stuff that up much. Plenty of roads where light rail will fit aswell, Northbourne, Belconnen Way, Adelaide Ave, Athllon Drive, Flemington Road….
But then we don’t really have any money…
Great photo. Was it peak hour? I think I can see a bicycle in the distance….. Great to see that bicycles are using the lane so heavily.
My suggestions for some options are:
1/ Allow motorcycles to use the bicycle lanes but speed limit them to 30km/h ( many bicycles easily exceed this speed, it is not viable for everyone to ride bicycles and more motorbikes mean less cars)
2/ Convert a lane to a dedicated transit lane and allow T2 or T3 in the lane (they do work as well as any other road rule and don’t require an increased police presence)
3/ Get EPIC parking working, make it free (at least initally) irrespective of whether the driver catches a bus, and introduce regular eg 5 minute busses down Northbourne Avenue. The frequency and speed with which busses and car pools could get to the city down express lanes would get a lot more than a couple of hundred off the road;
4/ Introduce a discounted (eg, $2.00) bus fair for the EPIC to city run. This would create a greater incentive to use busses, should be easy to implement with the new smartcard system and would better reflect the cost of running busses at high passenger load over a short distance (ie it stops ACTION using profits from this run to subsidise losses incurred from other runs);
5/ Consider introducing a small (nominal) congestion fee at peak times on Northbourne Avenue and the city (this should be easy to administer with the use of Etags).
6/ Abandon the idea of light rail (unless it is possible to run light rail down the middle over all of that cabling). It is rigid, requires expensive additional infrastructure and Canberra doesn’t have the population to sustain it.
To everyone who complains about buses holding up traffic, I should point out that if the same number of people on that bus (50) were each driving a car then they would be holding you up for a lot longer. Car users should be thankful that others are not using the roads in such an inefficient manner and leaving them and the car-parks clearer. As for transport solutions I really think that cycle paths are a low hanging fruit that the government ignores, build a 2m path that is direct, connected and well maintained (far cheaper than a road) and people will have greater incentive to cycle than if they have to ride alongside angry motorists or ride on cracked, overgrown footpaths that lead nowhere.
thy_dungeonman said :
Rubbish, 50 cars travelling unimpeded down northbourne is much faster than bus stopping to let people on and off. Even an express bus will only get there seconds faster. Remove the buses from northbourne (and 5 sets of traffic lights during peak hour and everyone gets there faster.
Closing a lane of northbourne to traffic with crace and bonner about to come on line is insane. Running all the buses from epic to dickson, down cowper and through braddon to the interchange makes a lot of sense
Why bother using Northbourne when there are viable alternatives driving through Lyneham/O’Connor/Turner or Dickson/Braddon/Reid?
shadow boxer said :
Except those 50 cars are impeded by another 50 cars which are impeded by another 50 etc. The road can only handle so many cars. Having more buses, although it impedes cars, reduces the potential amount of cars on the road out-ways the inconvenience caused by the speed of the buses, a bus can’t block as much traffic as 50 cars waiting for another 50 cars etc. Also with buses contribute less to road wear than the equivalent volume of cars, and it’s road works that really seem to be holding up the traffic recently.
What about making parking at EPIC free, and running buses to the city every 5-10 minutes from there? That would surely reduce congestion from the north. Then think about an area where you get southsiders heading to the city to park, and offer the same service. I think there’d be far more incentive to get onto public transport if you could find a way to fit in with those who have to drop kids at school, then head to the city.
Shadow Boxer raises a good point – are people really going to go through several steps taking time and effort rather than drive? Maybe, but only we if make it work for them.
Getting cars out of the city to reduce congestion and hassle is a great idea, it just requires some sensible thinking to go with it.