Guangzhou Bus Rapid Transit

[wyliepoon]

Guangzhou, China has opened up a Bus Rapid Transit line as part of the city's preparations for hosting this year's Asian Games. It's been criticized as slow, but the line looks pretty neat with BRT stations featuring platform gates, built in a 'canyon' of tall buildings.

Is Viva taking note of this?

http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-02/505556.html

Slower is the new faster on Guangzhou's Bus Rapid Transit



By Xu Shenglan

Commuters in Guangzhou have criticized the city's new BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) line, slamming it for being slow and chaotic, the Nanfang Daily reported.

The Zhongshan Avenue section of the BRT opened for free trial runs on Wednesday. But the service takes seven minutes to travel about 500 meters as the buses must stop at fixed sites and cannot jump the queue to stop. This leads to jams, with more than a dozen buses lined up and edging forward slowly.

Most passengers said they didn't feel the BRT buses are faster than ordinary ones; some said they are even slower.

Office workers became impatient, shouting "anything wrong?" while on a bus that was blocked 20 meters from a BRT stop.

One passenger said the bus was faster. "The B2A bus only took about 10 minutes as it skipped some minor stops," said a woman surnamed Zhou.

One transportation expert explained possible reasons for the delays.

"There are more restrictions now for public buses although it claims that there would be some preferences," said the expert surnamed Xu. "Buses can run in all lanes before but now they are stuck in one lane. The long queue will be inevitable when they wait for traffic lights."

The boarding time for BRT buses was set at 30 seconds for a trial run on February 4 and the operation went smoothly. But it took more than a minute to board on Wednesday.

The delay was due to confusion over which doors to use to board the bus, leading to chaos, with passengers trying to get on and off at both the front and back.

It is reported that a BRT bus took 70 minutes to finish a full run on Wednesday, equivalent to 19.6 kilometers per hour, which almost meets the 20 kilometers per hour minimum promised by the government.

"The 10-day trial period is for people to identify any problems, and then we will try to solve them," said Jie Yalin, deputy director of Guangzhou Transportation Commission.

The BRT offers free rides during the period.

The route covers 23 kilometers with 26 stops along several thoroughfares.

Guangzhou has become the 11th city to open a BRT system after cities including Beijing, Hangzhou and Chongqing.

Photos from http://www.gzbrt.org/

(At the top left corner of this photo is the Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower, which has surpassed the CN Tower as the world's tallest tower)

 

[doady]

Not only should YRT/VIVA and BT/Zum take note that BRT should have substance instead of just marketing, but MT/GO should take note of the straight alignment, proper stations, bus bypass lanes and high density development along this transitway for their on-street own transitway down the middle of Rathburn. Hell, even the TTC can learn fromn this for their ROWs for the Transit City and St-Clair lines. The TTC needs to recognize that ROWs should be designed for transit, not cars. And the hardcore Jane Jacobs type urbanites can learn that streets to not need to be less than 4 lanes wide to be urban and pedestrian friendly.

 

[Hipster Duck]

4-lanes + a station is pretty wide, but it's possible in places like Kingston Road, Hurontario and Highway 7 (especially if you use up the space occupied by the power lines). It doesn't even have to be that wide; for the most part, the ROW only has to be 2 lanes except at stations where you could feasibly get it down to 3: two stop lanes in either direction and a shared passing lane that is first in-first out.

 

[Archivist]

I have to say, though, that is one butt-ugly city, from those images.

 

[mpd618]

Pedestrian-friendly streets? Surely you're looking at some other photos.

To me that looks like a pretty horrible street environment. And I doubt those buses are helping the smog any.

 

[doady]

Pedestrian-friendly streets? Surely you're looking at some other photos.

To me that looks like a pretty horrible street environment. And I doubt those buses are helping the smog any.

Yes, hundreds of pedestrians are a sign of a hostile pedestrian environment, and buses have no positive environmental effect whatsoever. So typical.

 

[mpd618]

Yes, hundreds of pedestrians are a sign of a hostile pedestrian environment, and buses have no positive environmental effect whatsoever. So typical.

Typical of what? I would be put off by those pedestrian barriers and the difficulty of crossing the road (though I doubt dealing with a car there is easier). It reminds me of Las Vegas Boulevard, albeit lacking in any interesting sights. There's plenty of reasons for there to be many pedestrians despite an unfriendly pedestrian environment.

Any positive environmental effect of buses relates to them in comparison with private automobiles, which I doubt are a viable alternative for any significant percentage of the riders in this case.

 

[Archivist]

In cities that I have visited in the far east, including Tokyo and other Japanese cities, Beijing, Seoul and Hong Kong, it's not at all atypical to have many very large, very traffic heavy streets (like those shown above) snaking through a city, which are often only crossable in parts by overhead walkways (or unground walkways, the latter especially in Seoul). I found this to be mostly unpleasant, though the streets are certainly busy and retain a viable commercial life. They are somewhat unpleasant, but not the end of the world.

The flip side not seen in the images above, is that non-major streets were often tiny little lanes, that were frequently pedestrian only or so pedestrianized that vehicles have been quite fully tamed (sort of like Kensington here, but even more so). The lanes, with a lot of commercial activity, went on and on for blocks, and were both lively and interesting. They are a lot like Copenhagen's walking district, but bigger.

Frankly, the combination of the two struck me as a bit of a tradeoff, if I had to evaluate them to Toronto's very different physical structure, I think they are, on the whole, somewhat preferable, since it's pretty easy to avoid the big streets if you really want to, and dive right into the tiny little lanes.

Not having been to Guangzhou, I can't say if there are all sorts of tiny little streets just off the bus route above, but it would not surprise me if that were the case.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I agree with doady. If pedestrians are using that environment, they probably don't consider it to be particularly hostile.

 

[mpd618]

I agree with doady. If pedestrians are using that environment, they probably don't consider it to be particularly hostile.

In that vein a bread line could be taken as evidence that the bread is pretty decent. Look - if the pedestrian environment were unbearable, people would avoid it (if they could). But job and housing locations and finances (and this is China we're talking about) conspire to remove substantial choice from the equation. In this case the pedestrian environment is something they can live with, but I'm absolutely sure it's not contributing to most users' quality of life in a positive way.

Not having been to Guangzhou, I can't say if there are all sorts of tiny little streets just off the bus route above, but it would not surprise me if that were the case.

This is a much more interesting point, but the Guangzhou BRT line doesn't look like it has any smaller streets that can help one get anywhere. The line has all the charm of an urban expressway.

 

[Second_in_pie]

In response to Viva taking note, I think of two things:

One, if York Region can pull off that scale of development along it's Highway 7 and Yonge corridors, I'll be thoroughly amazed.

Two, I'm seeing this as a strictly temporary measure. A band-aid for the Asian Games, but to require higher order transit in the near future. I mean, that number of busses has to at the least be warranting LRT, if not full blown subway.

And a combination of the two, if York Region does pull that off, we could be seeing Yonge north and Highway 7 subways!

 

[Fresh Start]

That is far from a band-aid solution. A busway built to this scale with that type of urban high-density developments surrounding it is generating subway levels of demand and ridership to rival even that of the Yonge Line. See, I have been mocked for months when trying to say that this is what we need here in Toronto/GTA. Finch Hydro Corridor is primed for this, 4 lanes and 2 platform areas can fit there easily. Highway 27 is also another potential ROW. I don't know why anyone would prefer to spend 120 minutes on the combined Finch West-Sheppard LRT line when a Finch Hydro Corridor crosstown BRT could navigate that length in under 45. But I digress; this is really impressive and puts most North American incarnations of BRT to absolute shame.

 

[wyliepoon]

Two, I'm seeing this as a strictly temporary measure. A band-aid for the Asian Games, but to require higher order transit in the near future. I mean, that number of busses has to at the least be warranting LRT, if not full blown subway.

Considering the flurry of subway construction in China, this BRT route could easily have been built as a subway if the government wanted to. I think this BRT route, like many infrastructure projects in China, is largely a prestige project to demonstrate that China can not only have projects that other developed countries have, but it can build and operate them better than anybody else. Guangzhou, like many Chinese cities of its size, has a rapidly expanding metro system, and it often takes ruthless steps of razing or damaging whole neighbourhoods to push through a metro line.

 

[Fresh Start]

Considering the flurry of subway construction in China, this BRT route could easily have been built as a subway if the government wanted to. I think this BRT route, like many infrastructure projects in China, is largely a prestige project to demonstrate that China can not only have projects that other developed countries have, but it can build and operate them better than anybody else. Guangzhou, like many Chinese cities of its size, has a rapidly expanding metro system, and it often takes ruthless steps of razing or damaging whole neighbourhoods to push through a metro line.

True. People tend to forget the irreparable harm years and years fo subway construction can do to a corridor's vibrace and streetlife. Building road-median busway have ill-effects in so far as taking away lanes from the motorists and in rarer instances the expropriation of curbside property (mainly public sidewalk space). BRT is actually a very complimentary service to have within a network that already has an extensive subway system, RE: Mexico City, Sao Paulo. We just need to recognize that one mode cannot suit all conditions and given the rising pricetag of HRT and even LRT, BRT in its own ROW can provide similar levels of service to rail transit at only fractions of the cost.

 

[golodhendil]

True. People tend to forget the irreparable harm years and years fo subway construction can do to a corridor's vibrace and streetlife.

Exactly. Remember how Champs-Élysées and Gran Via were like totally wrecked when they built the Metro? Poor Oxford Street, never recovered from that ordeal of building the Tube. Imagine what Nathan Road could have been like if they didn't build that damned MTR underneath it. 34th Street, Omotesando or Toigyero? Pish, they've got nothing on our Kingston Road when we put that BRT on it!

By the way, what wylie was referring to is tearing down old neighbourhoods in order to build subways (like what is usually done when dropping multilane expressways onto city cores), not the "irreparable harm" that subway construction will do to streetlife. Incidentally, IIRC, such neighbourhood-razing has not been done so far during the construction of the Guangzhou Metro in the city core (for building expressways, yes), though I am ready to be corrected on this if wylie can find actual examples of this having happened.