Bus lane

This article is about road infrastructure. For the 2007 Thai film, see Bus Lane (film).

Bus lane in Mannheim, Germany

A bus lane on Gloucester Road in Hong Kong, with the words "bus lane" painted in English and "巴士綫" in Chinese

Bus lane of the pioneer Rede Integrada de Transporte in Curitiba, Brazil

Bus lane in Athens, Greece

Bus lane on Broadway (New York City), with the words "only bus" painted in English

Brt System in Delhi

A bus lane or bus only lane is a lane restricted to buses on certain days and times, and generally used to speed up public transport that would be otherwise held up by traffic congestion. Often restrictions do not apply to certain other vehicles, which may include taxis, high occupancy vehicles, motorcycles, and bicycles Bus lanes are a central part of bus rapid transit.

Function

Bus lanes give priority to buses and cut down on journey times where roads are congested with other traffic. A bus lane is not necessarily very long, as it may only be used to bypass a single congestion point such as an intersection. Some cities have built large stretches of bus lanes amounting to a separate local road system, often called a busway system.

Bus lanes are normally created when the road in question is both likely to be congested and heavily traveled by bus routes. Entire roads can be designated as bus lanes (such as Oxford Street in London or Fulton Street in New York City), allowing buses, taxis and delivery vehicles only, or a contra-flow bus lane can allow buses to travel in the opposite direction to other vehicles. Some bus lanes operate at certain times of the day only, usually during rush hour, allowing all vehicles to use the lane at other times, and it is common to have bus lanes in only one direction, such as for the main direction of the morning rush hour traffic, with the buses using normal lanes in the other direction.

Bus lanes may have separate sets of traffic signals, to allow priority at intersections.

History

According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and the National Transit Database (NTD), the world's first designated bus lane was created in Chicago in 1939.

The first bus lanes in Europe were established in 1962 in the German city of Hamburg.^{[citation needed]} Other large German cities soon followed, and the implementation of bus lanes was officially sanctioned in the German highway code in 1971. Many experts from other countries (Japan among the first) studied the German example and implemented similar solutions. On January 15, 1964 the first bus lane in France was designated along the quai du Louvre in Paris and the first counter-flow lane was established on the old pont de l’Alma on June 15, 1966. On 26 February 1968 the first bus lane in London was put into service on Vauxhall Bridge.^{[citation needed]} By 1972 there were over 140 km of with-flow bus lanes in 100 cities within OECD member countries, and the network grew substantially in the following decades.

The El Monte Busway between El Monte and Downtown Los Angeles was the first busway in the USA, constructed in 1974.

Marking

Bus lanes may be marked in several ways. They must be demarcated by lines on the road; road signs may warn that thy are bus lanes on certain days and times; descriptive text such as "BUS LANE" may be marked prominently on the road surface, particularly at the beginning and end; the road surface may have a distinctive colour. Other special-purpose lanes may similarly be marked, e.g. a cycle path may have bicycle symbols and a different coloured surface.

Criticism

The installation of bus lanes requires additional space to either be constructed (increasing the impact of the road on the surrounding area, and possibly requiring private land) or taken from existing lanes; this may reduce the capacity of the road for private vehicles if the space used exceeds the advantages of bus-free roads. The loss of lanes is controversial with many road users when this is actually an ancillary reason (i.e. when local authorities want to explicitly combine improved public transport options with reducing or at least not improving convenience for motorists).

Bus lanes can become ineffective if weak enforcement allows use by unauthorized vehicles or illegal parking on them (for example in shopping areas).

Evidence from the operation of urban arterials in Brisbane, Australia shows that a properly enforced Bus or Transit lane, operating as designed, can increase person throughput. In 2009 and 2010 traffic surveys showed that in Brisbane on a number of urban arterials with Bus and Transit lanes non-compliance rates were approaching 90 per cent. Following enhanced enforcement of the lanes, non-compliance rates dropped and overall efficiency of the Bus and Transit lanes improved with an up to 12 per cent increase in total person throughput in the lane. Average bus journeys times dropped, in some cases, by up to 19 per cent.

Major city networks

Bus lane sign in Norway.

A bus lane in Church St, Parramatta, New South Wales

Some network lengths of bus lanes in major cities, listed by buses per km of bus lane):

City	Country	Population (million)	Buses (#s)	Population per bus	Bus lanes (km)	Buses per 1 km of bus lane
Helsinki	Finland	0.6	470	1,238	44	11
Sydney	Australia	4.3	1,900	2,260	90+	21
Santiago	Chile	6.5	4,600	1,400	200	23
London	UK	7.5	6,800	1,100	240	28
Singapore	Singapore	4.5	3,775	1,200	155	29
Seoul	Korea, South !South Korea	10.4	8,910	1,167	282	32
Madrid	Spain	7	2,022	2,720	50	40
Bogotá	Colombia	6.7	1,080	6,200	84	45
São Paulo	Brazil	10.9	14,900	730	155	96
Kunming	China, People's Republic of ! People's Republic of China	5.7	~	~	42
Hong Kong	Hong Kong (PRC)	6.8	19,768	666	22	899

The busiest bus lane in the United States (connecting to the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City) carries at peak times approximately 700 buses per hour, an average of one bus every 5.1 seconds.

In contrast the Cross Habour Tunnel in Hong Kong carries 14,500 buses per day, or an average of about 605 an hour all day (not just peak times), but the bus lane must give-way to all the other road-users resulting in long queues of buses.

Highway networks

Highway bus lane on Gyeongbu Expressway in South Korea

Country	Highway	Bus lanes (km)	Section
Korea, South !South Korea	Gyeongbu Expressway	137.4	Hannam IC (Seoul) ~ Sintanjin IC (Daejeon)
Hong Kong (PRC)	Tuen Mun Road	8.5	So Kwun Wat ~ Sham Tseng

Reduction in pollution

The introduction of bus lanes can significantly assist in the reduction of pollutants

See also

BRT Bus priority Guided bus

HOT Lane HOV Lane Public transport bus service

Reversible lane Straddling bus Tram