When the Olympics arrive, I highly doubt that the busway and tunnels will operate in the manner that it does now. We would probably see something like road closures allowing a permanent right of way to be in place from the Melbourne Street Tunnel through to King George Square. Queen Street Bus Station will be disconnected from King George Square, with routes either being curtailed and terminating outside of the CBD during the event, and/or rerouted above ground and out over the Captain Cook Bridge.
I caught an M1 again yesterday afternoon (same time as previously), and again I found it to be quick. I timed it at ~30 secs from leaving the KGS platform to being aboveground. We did hit a red light at North Quay this time, but despite that we were still at Cultural Centre in about 3 minutes flat.
I am a bit concerned that the Metrobus/Bertie system may be extended without even using Bus lanes and priority traffic lights throughout the entire system. Instead just using a weak rebranding of big buses that get stuck in traffic.
Are we in sufficient agreement that such an outcome would be foolish?
Would we be agreed enough that we could immediately condemn that?
What is the minimum standard we as a group can accept?
And from what Iâve seen, an extension of Mater Hill is exceedingly unlikely because it is adjoined to Mater Health Services.
But South Bank might be a possibility, as it is an elevated busway station.
Usually these bottlenecks occur because of long dwell times (per bus).
An easy, short-term fix would be to make tapping off using your gocard/phone a thing of a bygone era.
The transport planners wonât like it, but it feels almost necessary, if we want our tiny busway stations (ie. Mater Hill & South Bank) to be hassle-free.
That, or you know, moving the ticketing to the station side instead. We have a next generation ticketing system now so might as well use it to its fullest.
Mater Hill is short yes (only about 45m?) but I thought South Bank was the usual length of about 60m? (SB is barely any shorter than e.g. Griffith Uni or Boggo Rd P6).
Surely it wouldnât be hard to make the Bertie services operate via taps on the platforms. I canât think of a good reason to have the tapping on and off happen on the vehicle other than the fact that itâs a bus and thatâs how other buses work.
If we are to reach the point of 4 or 5 Metrobus lines will the busway need to be totally dedicated to Metrobus services?
Yeah pretty much, itâs all very well to have platform entrance readers but if Iâm transferring from another bus to a Bertie I need to have a tap point on the platformâŚ
Passengers should not be able to reopen the vehicle doors once closing - thatâs how it is with G:link and it is magical because it ensures ontime departures.
All bus drivers need to be instructed not to wait on busway platforms for people running, always pull up as close to the front of the platform as possible, never reenter the platform having left it etc.
Talking about dwell times, how about issues at KGS station aka City Hall when the screen doors are flashing red and the metro doors are closed. Sometimes the screen doors close so slowly even when the metro doors are closed. They are slower than lift doors closing and the bus cant leave until all platform screen doors are fully closed and the red light turns off. (It can take over minute sometimes for those screen doors to close even when the metro bus or regular bus is ready to leave.)
On another note there has been a weird sewage smell on platform 1 at KGS. Something wrong with the ventilation and A/C. It smells like itâs contaminated.
