NZ In Tranzit: Cambridge Guided Busway "a fantastically smooth ride"

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Cambridge Guided Busway "a fantastically smooth ride" - bus driver

Guided busway near Over, Combridgeshire Photo Wikimedia Commons

Tranzwatching in Cambridge, United Kingdom

Few public transport projects - rail, tram or bus - have had quite such a topsy turvy up and down ride in the making as the saga of the world's longest guided busway built between UK university city Cambridge and surrounding small towns, utilising the corridor of land of a former railway line. Even now legal action between replaced construction firm BAM Nuttall and the Cambridge Council continues.

But the busway itself ....due to open for use in about three weeks ...the effect of combining latest buses with a preset concrete guide track ....according to veteran Stagecoach bus driver Mike Capper, “It’s a fantastically smooth ride now compared to when I started driving all those years ago. It’s amazing. The A14 or this? There is no comparison.”

A moving track laying machine for guided busway concrete guide rails created by BAM Nuttall. . I would imagine the potential of such busways to be used by trucking companies, including oversize road trains at night after bus services cease, can not be ignored. In effect this finds middle ground between rail and road in freight as well as passenger traffic. With hundreds of kilometres of disused rail corridors in the UK this busway is also seen as a significant experiment, watched with keen interest by British transport operators and authhorities, incuding the Transport Ministry. (Photos Thanks to Wikimedia Commons)

2 comments:

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This blog is mostly about public transport and social infrastructure in Christchurch, and transit around New Zealand. Also tracked; transit developments in similar sized cities in Canada and Australia, kindred in demographic patterns, for added perspective and inspiration. NZ in Tranzit blog covers some of the new transit technology and discusses public transport concepts in general, as well. Because the blogster's day-job is in a high profile customer industry to preserve some degree of privacy he appears only as a rabbit in his profile, albeit using his real name.

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Cambridge Guided Busway "a fantastically smooth ride" - bus driver

2 comments:

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