Interesting article about what has been achieved in Bogota Designs Transportation for People, Not Cars.
What is particularly interesting is that in Crawley we have a new transport system being developed called Fastway which includes guided buses. Crawley is more than a little different from Bogota so it is amazing that the same basic idea of buses in dedicated lanes is being installed.
My concern is that this approach (in Crawley) needs to be very long term, they are going to have to run a high level of service at a huge loss for a long time to gradually win people over to using it. People don't use public transport much here because it has been so poor. Fastway will not reach very large parts of the town and I don't see lots of integration. At the moment this is a town dominated by car transport.
The ideal feeder system for a limited fastway network would surely be bike. So where are the quality covered bike parks at all the fastway stops? Or even lockable lockers to leave your bike in. Where are the quality feeder cycle paths. Unfortunately it looks as if the fastway buses don't have bike carrying capacity.
They talk vaguely about future internet access to the live bus data, but nothing seems to be done yet. People need to be able to check from home or office when the next actual bus will arrive to time their walk or bike ride to avoid hanging around in the wet and cold.
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