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Bus beats train for efficiency — proof from a GLC planner
Page 39
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I Proof that an express bus service is nore efficient than an urban railway system s provided by an article in the current ssue of The Journal of Transport Tconomics and Policy, a magazine pubished by the London School of Economics. 'Written by Mr Edward Smith, who is in he Greater London Council's department )1' planning and transportation, the article ;ontrasts the cost of urban bus and rail veration. It compares the total economic ;ost to the community, including the )pportunity cost of all resources of urban .itilways, with express bus services along. ;orridors where peak traffic is sufficient to rfilize the capacity of a railway. It comes town heavily on the side of the bus.
Mr Smith points out that, although an ;xpress bus service can operate on any .oad, for it to compete effectively with an titan railway service it must not be iindered by traffic congestion. Reserved anes are necessary where other restraint neasures are not adequate to protect buses 'tom congestion. On express buses, says the irticle, it is necessary only to permit them niority access to motorways. Once they are m the motorway a priority measure, such ts a reserved lane, is no longer required. vIr Smith says that the most effective exwess service should employ 12m doubleleek buses carrying 100 seated passengers
or 150 passengers, including 75 standees.
Car-km costs are chosen as the means of comparing bus and rail operating expenses. Car or carriage costs can range from £30,000 to £89,000 for rail compared with the new cost of a London Transport-type bus of some £12,000. In depreciation terms, rail carriages (life about two million km) cost about 2p /km, while buses (life, 800,000km) cost only 1.5p /km. In staff, too, there are savings for the bus. London Transport employs 6.2 staff per car on its Underground services but only 4.7 staff per bus, both figures excluding conductors and guards. Even in the least labourintensive systems the balance favours the bus. Per car-km, railways use more than twice as much energy as buses.
Some of the most revealing figures quoted in the article concern the relative standing and operating costs of buses and railways. They are compiled from LT's 1970 costings. The weekly standing charge per car in service for the rail operation was £207. For buses it was only £139. Running cost per car-km for the railways was 7.6p compared with 5.3p for buses.
A modern urban railway using eight-car trains (like LT's Victoria Line) can carry up to 240 cars /track hour. Experiments, mostly in America, have shown that the possible capacity of a motorway is as high as 1400 buses/lane-hour. However, even a conservatively estimated practical figure of about 1000 buses/lane-hour would give a capacity almost four times as great, as a railway track.
Mr Smith goes on to consider the potential for converting certain sectors of urban railway to road. Assuming that the existing railway operation cost is 18p/ car-km and the operating cost of an express bus is 13p /car-km, then for a traffic of 600,000 cars/track-year a potential saving of .00,000/lane-km-year is feasible, he says. Given that the cost of conversion is £24,000/lane-km (the average of 22 known cases of railway conversion) then a yearly return on investment of 125 per cent is possible from the reduction in operating costs.
In its conclusions, the article says that an express bus service can utilize costly track much more intensively than an urban railway. It employs lightweight, low-cost rolling stock and achieves faster and more convenient services by largely eliminating the need for interchanges. It is less labourintensive, too. Mr Smith goes on: "Some existing railways could easily be converted to roads with considerable benefit to the community. Costs of conversion could be quickly recovered from the lower costs of operation."