Department Of Transportation Employment | International Transport Services

With the recent opening of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, the spotlight is once again on public transport provision in the United Kingdom. Edinburgh’s Tramway is mired in controversy, and the saga of the Busway looks as if it will be settled in court.

Cambridge

The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, which runs from Huntingdon via St Ives to Cambridge, is the longest such system in the world, and opened two-and-a-half years late in August 2011. However, it appears to be initially popular, with revisions being made to the timetable almost immediately to increase service frequency. Using a preformed concrete construction, the guided sections allow regular road-going buses to use the Busway with the slight modification of a set of ‘guide wheels’ close to the front axle of the bus which lock into shaped kerbs on the guideway. The route bypasses the busy and accident-prone A14 road, offers a smooth, fast run into Cambridge and also provides two badly-needed new park & ride sites on the north-western side of the city. The construction was fraught with difficulty, using it is much simpler.

Bournemouth

Not all locations are as lucky as Cambridge, however. Despite the system being an award winner, the Yellow Buses in Bournemouth have been described by one resident as ‘a joke’. The main problems seem to be that the services do not run to time and are not convenient for users. A journey that takes 15-20 minutes by car takes twice as long by bus and could result in passengers being late for work. There is no doubt that public transport works best when an employer runs a flexitime scheme, allowing employees to roll with the disruptions caused by roadworks or an accident on a key route. Many operators run a schedule of one bus every 20 minutes, but in practice this does not always work and even those companies which run a more frequent service can come unstuck at times.