College Street bus upgrades

They’ve finished upgrading the College Street – it’s now a maze of bus lanes and normal traffic lanes crossing over each other.

Does anyone have a diagram of how it is supposed to work?

Annoying they did not build it as per their publically displayed option:
http://www.transport.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/396342/Belconnen_to_City_Transitway_-_Belconnen_Sector.pdf

aidan said :

thatsnotme said :

aidan said :

The bus lane on Belconnen Way is bloody brilliant. The major beef has been the time it took to complete.

Assuming you mean Barry Drive, not Belconnen Way, couldn’t agree more.

Yeah. Didn’t realise Barry Drive started at the Fairfax St intersection.

It doesn’t actually. Belconnen Way starts/ends at the Fairfax St roundabout and runs westwards to Kingsford Smith Drive.

Barry Drive starts/ends at Belconnen Way just up from Fairfax Street and runs through to Northborne Ave.

banco said :

DrKoresh said :

The problem on College St. is all the fecking parents of Radford students lining up to pick up their precious pumpkins from the school gate because the vast majority are too fragile and delicate to catch a 300 bus (from right out the front of the bloody school) to a more sensible pick-up destination. I’d suggest that maybe the little darlings go all the way to an interchange and then catch a bus from there to the nearest stop from their home, but Heaven forfend a private school child should ever suffer the indignity of public transport, they’d get all dirty.

Guess who can’t afford to send their child to a private school?

Or who can but is smart enough not to.

thatsnotme said :

aidan said :

The bus lane on Belconnen Way is bloody brilliant. The major beef has been the time it took to complete.

Assuming you mean Barry Drive, not Belconnen Way, couldn’t agree more.

Yeah. Didn’t realise Barry Drive started at the Fairfax St intersection.

banco said :

Guess who can’t afford to send their child to a private school?

Yes, let’s pick on people who don’t think $17000 a year for high school is a worthy investment.

thatsnotme said :

aidan said :

The bus lane on Belconnen Way is bloody brilliant. The major beef has been the time it took to complete.

Assuming you mean Barry Drive, not Belconnen Way, couldn’t agree more. Yep, it took way too long, but now it’s a road where if I drive life is easier, if I catch a bus it’s faster, and if I ride my bike I’m on dedicated bike paths pretty much the whole way. I’ve got no idea why JB feels the need to question its “success” apart from either not actually using it, or just hopping on the bandwagon.

They did a good job in the city bound direction, but Belconnen bound it is not good at all. In particular from Marcus Clarke Street you have 3 lanes, that goes to two immediately past the intersection with Kingsley Street with no warning. Also this bit of road has exits from the car park, so often even driving in the centre lane you will get cars pushing their nose into the middle lane, or worse trying to get to the outside lane straight away. The road then opens up to 3 lanes before the dedicated bus lane starts making it 4 lanes. But still you see cars going to the uni driving in the bus lane, when they are meant to drive in the normal lane and wait until the broken line just before North Drive to enter the bus lane to complete their turn. Not long after that the car lanes merge from 3 to 2, again no warning.

Then you get to Clunnies Ross Street and the bus lane then merges with the car lanes forming two lanes up and over the mountain. Of course the merge used to be much further up the hill, but for what ever reason they decided to yet again bring it to just after the intersection. On top of that vehicles coming from Clunnies Ross street used to be able to drive in the left lane up the hill, but now need to cross the bike and bus lanes to get into the left car lane. How it worked before there was fine, it gave buses the priority they needed and made a safe turn for cars out of Clunnies Ross Street.

So really Belconnen bound it is a mess and for what? The part the have screwed was never a great issue for cars or buses, the biggest issue on Barry Drive before was city bound, in particular buses that needed to cross from left at the end of the bus lane to the right to turn into the city. As mentioned this was fixed and done well. What they should have done Belconnen bound is nothing much before Clunnies Ross Street and then spend the money making the bus lane go from Clunnies Ross Street to the start of Belconnen Way, just like we see on the City bound lanes. But no that bit still remains, with vehicles doing stupid things to get past buses struggling to get up the hill.

aidan said :

The bus lane on Belconnen Way is bloody brilliant. The major beef has been the time it took to complete.

Assuming you mean Barry Drive, not Belconnen Way, couldn’t agree more. Yep, it took way too long, but now it’s a road where if I drive life is easier, if I catch a bus it’s faster, and if I ride my bike I’m on dedicated bike paths pretty much the whole way. I’ve got no idea why JB feels the need to question its “success” apart from either not actually using it, or just hopping on the bandwagon.

Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to divert all buses heading to Kaleen/Gungahlin via UC – Cooinda, Bimbimbie, Kirinari then University Drive? This is was the 980 does (or at least used to do) on weekends so the infrastructure is already there.

Routes 30, 31, 56, 58, 59 and 71 all go north to Kaleen/Gungahlin and the traffic in UC traffic is hardly ever that bad – so the time added to each trip would be negligible. This would mean the only buses going down College street would be the 300s as well as routes 3 and 7.

DrKoresh said :

The problem on College St. is all the fecking parents of Radford students lining up to pick up their precious pumpkins from the school gate because the vast majority are too fragile and delicate to catch a 300 bus (from right out the front of the bloody school) to a more sensible pick-up destination. I’d suggest that maybe the little darlings go all the way to an interchange and then catch a bus from there to the nearest stop from their home, but Heaven forfend a private school child should ever suffer the indignity of public transport, they’d get all dirty.

Guess who can’t afford to send their child to a private school?

DrKoresh said :

The problem on College St. is all the fecking parents of Radford students lining up to pick up their precious pumpkins from the school gate because the vast majority are too fragile and delicate to catch a 300 bus (from right out the front of the bloody school) to a more sensible pick-up destination. I’d suggest that maybe the little darlings go all the way to an interchange and then catch a bus from there to the nearest stop from their home, but Heaven forfend a private school child should ever suffer the indignity of public transport, they’d get all dirty.

+ 1 one of the best quotes ever and a truer statement never made. All the 30 somethings in their Toorak Tractors