7 August 2009

Bus stops opposite islands.

| AussieRodney
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What is it with the road planners these days? I understand the need for cycle paths to cross roads & the need to have a safety island on the road so that a cyclist can stop safely between the traffic streams. I understand that we need bus stops & that said bus stops should be reasonably close to pathways.

But do they both have to be at the SAME place? So that when the bus stops at the stop, it blocks ALL of the traffic?

At first, I thought the one on Kent Street in Deakin was just a bit of a booboo. But there has just been one constructed from scratch on Dixon Drive in Holder, which means the one in Deakin is not just a one-off.

/End rant.

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Actually I wouldn’t even say be patient or take the bus. To the OP I would suggest trying to have a life where important things concern you….and what TP said.

Today I have an itchy leg

Take the bus.

Or learn patience.

Putting pedestrian refuges at bus stops, and putting bus stops along pedestrian routes, and putting safe crossing facilities at bus stops, makes bus travel easier and safer. That’s a result of bus passengers not just materializing at bus stops a la Star Trek. They actually have to walk there via pedestrian routes from *gasp* across the road, or *gasp* down footpaths that provide pedestrian routes to nearby side streets.

AussieRodney5:38 pm 07 Aug 09

Thanks for the comments, folks. I certainly wasn’t having a go at cyclists.

j from the block said :

I just drive around them.

That’s the point, you can’t.

AG Canberra said :

or you could find a bit of patience and wait the 30 seconds for the bus to move off…..

You mean there’s a choice?

And I think the hilarious part is that passengers getting off the bus don’t have the time to get around to the back of the bus & across to the island before the traffic starts again. And that’s even assuming that the bus is not blocking the access to the island!

The higher res stuff is actually aerial photography, not satellite.

google maps is a satellite image – street view is a camera mounted on top of a vw. i know the new vw’s look a lot like skylab space junk, but they are two very different sets of images. sheesh.

what sort of crop does your egg plant?

A perfect example of why these traffic islands are right next to bus stops occurred in Sydney this week. A 9 year old girl was about to get on her bus, but remembered she left her keys at home & quickly dashed in front of the bus to get home. But another bus was overtaking the parked bus & didn’t see the girl until it was too late. Just remember this one when you go to overtake a parked bus.

I was told that is why the UC bus stops on College Street were changed-so that the silly UC students only had to cross one lane of traffic instead of 2.

I’ve seen a few funny times on the bus stops on Namatjira Drive, when I’ve managed to get around a bus parked there, but as I’ve gone past the bus has left the bus stop & the car behind me had started to go around the bus & was alongside the bus, but it had to stop as it (the car) was about to hit the traffic island.

Oh & Dr Phil in relation to your query on the Casey bus stops, when bus services are introduced to Casey (possibly 2011) the drivers may complain & it may end up being that the Transport Workers Union will suss these bus stops out & may get them moved. but driveway bus stops will stay. These bus stops have mostly been placed there so that when residents move in & have a bus zoom by every hour they can’t bitch & moan about the bus stop outside their home.

screaming banshee10:47 am 07 Aug 09

Aubergine said :

#3 – well spotted with that Google Maps shot demonstrating the problem perfectly. But for some reason when I go to Streetview the bus has disappeared.

Your interwebs musn’t be configurated properly

Aubergine said :

But for some reason when I go to Streetview the bus has disappeared.

That’s almost as good as the work experience kid telling me that the maps and Streetview in downtown New York are both live.

#3 – well spotted with that Google Maps shot demonstrating the problem perfectly. But for some reason when I go to Streetview the bus has disappeared.

The new suburb Casey (2913) has bus stops on bends, on islands, near driveways. I rang around the ACT goverment to see who was in charge of putting the bus stops in and I got passed around like a game at a 3 year olds birthday party.

It is deliberate and IMHO a good move. Island placement like this gives people on foot a chance to cross the road every time a bus stops. Another positive is they break up motor vehicle traffic for people in cars trying to enter the road from side streets. They’re a cheap alternative to traffic lights.

It’s all about attempting to strike an adequate balance for everyone who needs to use the road, rather than giving priority to those in motor vehicles, all the time, as has been done for too long in Australia.

Have a look at Lhotsky St in Charnwood. Every bus stop along there has a traffic island alongside it. Travelling from Charnwood shops to Fraser West or Dunlop can take forever in peak hour. There is no way to get past a bus along that entire stretch of road. When the bus stops everyone stops!!!! It’s been like this for years though!!!!

AG Canberra said :

or you could find a bit of patience and wait the 30 seconds for the bus to move off…..

+1

j from the block9:36 am 07 Aug 09

I just drive around them.

That one in Deakin is an absolute shocker, but there are plenty of others around.

These are deliberately engineered like that – there are fundamentalists in traffic engineering who believe that holding up lines of traffic while a bus stops, passengers get on and off, then pulls away, is a good thing to do.

Wankers!

There’s a whole string of them in Charnwood – has been for years now (at least 10, if I recall). Indeed, if you look up Lhotsky st, Charnwood, on google maps the marker will be right over a bus holding up a car at just such an arrangement. I never much cared for them either – I understand why you’d want the island there, to assist pedestrians getting off the bus to cross the road, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a better way…

or you could find a bit of patience and wait the 30 seconds for the bus to move off…..

Before we all jump on cyclists again, I think you’ll find that they are footpaths crossing the road, and that it’s a pedestrian island in the middle of the road.

Cowper Street in Ainslie has one of these, and yep, it’s right next to a bus stop. You can usually fit through the gap and drive around the bus, unless you get the one of the morons who doesn’t know how big their car is and thinks they need two lanes to go around the bus.

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