What’s so hard about a bus lane?
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Hoddle St inbound bus lane in AM peak - however there's no bus lane on the other (outbound) side
For a place ostensibly lacking in conviction politicians, we’re seeing a lot of appeals to Principle over Pragmatism in Australian politics. For example, the Greens claimed the high moral ground on the original incarnation of the carbon price and did it again last week in the debate on asylum seekers.
At a more modest level, the progressive Council of the City of Yarra in Melbourne also has an appetite for high mindedness ahead of mere practicality. Council has recently rejected a proposed bus lane in busy Hoddle Street, effectively on the grounds it wouldn’t be sustainable enough.
The Minister for Transport in Victoria, Terry Mulder, has also rejected the bus lane, although his reasons are more pragmatic. He fears it would eliminate parking spaces and thereby damage local businesses.
The Baillieu Government promised during the election campaign to roll back the former Government’s extension of clearways, so that might be a factor in his thinking. Council’s opposition might also have given the Minister some added incentive to knock back the proposal.
The bus lane was proposed by the Department of Transport. It would’ve provided an outbound lane in the evening peak by banning parking in 165 spaces between 4pm and 7pm. Hoddle Street already has an inbound peak hour bus lane but not an outbound one. It would’ve been a clearway for buses.
More than 130 outbound bus services use the road in the evening peak. They currently take up to 23 minutes to negotiate Victoria Parade and Hoddle Street. In uncongested conditions that journey takes as little as five minutes. The average saving from the proposed bus lane is estimated by the Department as eight minutes
Apart from the saving in travel time for passengers, there are a number of other reasons why the Minister’s decision to reject his Department’s proposal is unfortunate.
One is that the Minister’s department advised him “adequate alternative parking” is available for motorists to replace the 165 parking spaces. So Mr Mulder’s explanation doesn’t sound especially convincing on this score.
Another is that buses operating as part of the Doncaster Area Rapid Transit (DART) carry on average 10,700 passengers per day along Hoddle Street. That’s an order of magnitude larger than the number of motorists who would no longer be able to park there during peak hour.
And another is that if DART isn’t permitted to perform to its potential the Government will come under greater pressure to proceed with the vastly more expensive and less cost-effective Doncaster rail line. The Eddington Review recommended a bus solution for Doncaster instead of a rail line.
Council’s view is the elimination of a traffic lane would be a more sustainable approach than eliminating a lane of parking because it would reduce the total level of traffic. I think it would also exacerbate congestion and rat-running, but nevertheless Council’s right – eliminating a lane would lower overall traffic.
Although it doesn’t, Council could even argue that creating an additional lane (by banning parking) would create more space for extra vehicles in the other lanes because it would remove buses from them. That wouldn’t ultimately speed-up traffic but it would enable more vehicles to be driven at that time.
However given that even the Department’s modest proposal didn’t get up, the chances of the Council’s pure option getting the green light seem dim. Yet Council didn’t “compromise”. Had Council supported the Department, perhaps the Minister might’ve had enough metal in his back to go with it.
The Department’s proposal would’ve made public transport a much more attractive option for Doncaster workers. More road space will have to be given over to public transport in our cities in the future if they’re to function effectively, so it’s unfortunate the Baillieu Government couldn’t bring itself to give up 165 spaces between 4pm and 7pm even when satisfactory alternative parking is available.
Jean-Paul Sartre has something to say about the tension between principle and pragmatism. In the play Dirty Hands, a senior politician says to his intern:
But you, the intellectuals, the bourgeois anarchists, you invoke purity as your rationalisation for doing nothing. Do nothing, don’t move, wrap your arms tight around your body, put on your gloves. As for myself, my hands are dirty. I have plunged my arms up to the elbows in excrement and blood. And what else should one do? Do you suppose that it is possible to govern innocently?
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What to do when everyone is right and they all disagree? Answer, think outside the box.
DOT is right, putting in a bus lane will speed buses up. Council is right, the kerbside bus lane is unsuitable (earlier correspondents, see previous posts, have made the point that one cyclist, and cars turning left, can foul up a kerbside bus lane). The Minister is right, traders should have the parking spaces (which they should pay rent for).
There is already a usable bus lane in Hoddle Street, for southbound buses from 0700 to 1000. Use it for northbound buses – as a contraflow bus lane – from 1500 to 2000. The ‘local’ bus route, the 246, can continue as is. The DART buses run non-stop from Victoria Parade to Eastern Freeway, crossing over to the exit lanes for the Eastern Freeway at the end of the existing bus lane in Hoddle Street. Approx 1.7 km, non-stop apart from traffic lights, average speed 30 km/h taking lights into account, means just under 2 minutes from Victoria Parade to Eastern Freeway.
Cost – negligible compared to the cost of either the DOT or City of Yarra proposals.
And while you are about it, use an outbound contraflow lane in Victoria Parade on the south side of the tramway median. Suitable for stops on the median if desired.
Safety? Add a few ‘sleeping policemen’ on the edge of the red painted bus lane, and use the bus lane from start of services till 1145 southbound, then northbound from 1215 till end of services. Buses with headlights on all day – they will be seen even by the most stupid driver.
You are worried that the failure to get the bus lane may mean more support for the rail line. Dig out the MMTB Light Rail for Doncaster plan – it knocked spots off the (heavy) rail line proposal, being vastly cheaper, more suited to the likely passenger demand, and giving better distribution in the City. It can be improved, most of the CBD work has been done and if it uses Flinders Street instead of Collins Street as the non-peak routing, it is all done up to Alexandra Parade. And slight modification at the Doncaster end can improve things there.
Alan as usual a thoughtful artical and without pushing a barrow, but talking about a traffic issue in Hoddle Street over several paragraphs without mentioning the word car is sheer masterpiece. I concede motorists are mentioned though once. It is probably cars that are the problem and the photo lends a modicum of support to that proposition.
If Greece has the lowest cycling rate in Europe and the worst economy, is that anything for Melbourne to worry about if Western Australia succeeds?
If the Greek stats are so what are the cylco/economic states for the top performing countries of Europe and what lies in between as a gradient?
Well I hope that some day its not just buskers like me that notice these things but also town planners and statiticians so discussions …….no its unthinkable….there will be no discussion…we must subjugate all to cars until we are belly up broke
When did parking become sacrosanct? Why should the council or the city provide storage for private vehicles?
By coincidence Adelaide just opened some bus lanes in the centre of town (Grenfell Street) today. No sign of the sky falling just yet, though it is overcast.
Who Are the Owners of the Road System in Metropolitan Melbourne? The question is raised mainly to assist in clarifying who is responsible for the road system’s economic, environmental, health and wellbeing impact on the community. To comment on allocation of more road space for bus lanes requires discussion on the benefits generated by infrastructure changes for various “shareholders” in the road system.
The net community benefits from only replacing 165 on-road car parking spaces with a bus lane for more than 130 outbound bus services for two hours between 5 and 7 pm would appear to strongly favour traffic management benefitting bus and taxi passenger services.
With car parking readily available nearby, the question on how significant the business turnover loss over two hours of late afternoon parking removal is quantifiable. Maybe there are other perceived inconvenience factors attributable to some peoples’ deeper personal agendas that are affecting the decision making process?
I propose the bus lane equivalent of Copenhagen bike lanes with parking next to them. and tolling Hoddle St.
Oh, don’t get me started!! Sitting in the bus most nights taking at least 10-15 minutes longer than the morning trip just doesn’t make sense.
Here is a chance for the State and supposedly PT-supportive Councils to develop a state of the art, high capacity, high speed mass transit service for a pittance.
If parking is so important, then there is a large vacant plot behind Yarra Honda as well as a wide road reserve nearby that could easily accommodate 165 car spaces for the cost of one or two million dollars. Do something similar for the fifty or so spaces along Victoria Parade from the City and you’ve got a bus lane all the way.
Unfortunately, bowing to practicalities is something that conservatives and revolutionaries still need to learn to do. In a society such as ours, change nearly always comes from walking before running. The perfect outcome takes time. Get more bums on buses, and the argument for removing a traffic lane becomes much stronger.
Instead of spending a few million on further enhancing the pretty good service provided by DART, we are wasting millions on a Doncaster Rail Options Study when we all know building a rail line to Doncaster will be both horrendously expensive ($billions) and so far down the priority list (E-W Tunnel, Melbourne Metro for $10-15B each, NE Link, Rowville Rail, ports, freight rail, etc) that I am unlikely to see it in my lifetime – and I hopefully have a few years to go!
Let’s put some numbers on the disutility of the delay to the bus riders.
130 peak period buses – say 4,000 riders (pure guess).
4,000 x 8 = 32,000 minutes delay from absence of bus lane.
32,000 x20c per minute (which is somewhere in the normal range of valuation of travel time in transport studies, I believe) = $6400 worth of delay.
So each of the 165 parkers is causing about $40 worth of delay to bus riders.
It would seem obvious that the bus lane serves the greater good of the greater number.
To put it another way, you could offer each of the parkers up to $40 to go away, and still be ahead in the calculus of economic costs and benefits.
Would a calculation like this convince the minister? Of course not. I am regretfully concluding that most people, even if they don’t openly scorn economists, just don’t ‘get’ calculations like this, at a fairly deep level. They regard them as some sort of trickery. Their own mental comparisons are driven by emotional concepts of fairness. The benefit to the parkers is visible, the delay to the bus riders is invisible.
Moral: proposed changes should be based on good economics, but should appeal to emotion. With politicians, the arguments of boffins just don’t cut it.
Alright here is my 2c “Get rid of all on street parking for arterial roads!”.
It has to be one of the biggest wastes of space in our cities not only taking up a lane but affecting the abutting lanes with people getting into/out of the park. (The only marginal advantage is providing separation to pedestrians)
Lets think about how much these lanes cost us. A fairly standard outer metropolitan duplication costs $12m – $15m per lane km (effectively adding a lane each direction to a road). The cost in inner Melbourne would be a large chunk higher with all the services and more again if land was required. Are we happy that an asset that is effectively worth at least $15m/km is sitting there being taken up for a handful of parking spaces (200 max in a km of road unaffected by side roads/driveways). What a waste!
Arterial roads are primarily for the efficient and the effective movement of people (usually over longer distances with access as a secondary consideration). Surely we have enough off arterial parking to not need to choke our most important road infrastructure and deprive it of space for PT, traffic, cyclists, pedestrians or other priority uses as the case may be.
Onstreet parking on our arterials is like having fat deposits on your body’s main arteries. Not only can you usually do something about it that’s a bit difficult but overall worthwhile. If you neglect it then soon enough you will have an increasing chance of a heart attack! Unfortunately Hoddle Street is probably responsible for a number of heart attacks and probably not just of the congestion kind.
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