Great Western Coffee Shop

I'm writing from Guadalajara, where I've been for the last week. It's been hard work and I've been less 'around' than normal, but yesterday I had an opportunity to have a tour in the afternoon, and to eat our with my local contacts in the evening.  A very hospitabvle people.

Guadalajara is a bustling historic city of around 5 million - and the car rules; the usual traffic jams are here, and watching the cars go by most of them are single occupant.   But there's a fleet of buses too; a considerable number pass by where I have been staying - a suburb about 3 miles out from the center; there is usually a bus within site, sometimes several.  They are between a minibus and a regular bus in size, and look and sound like they have big,inefficient engines.  I've noted the trolley buses, and that there is a metro system - just two lines - "very good if it goes where you want".   And loads of yellow cabs.

I also saw the Macrobus which is new and controversial.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/gumx61a.jpg)

It runs on a two concrete lanes down the middle of one of the major roads, right across the city and underneath the downtown area. Concrete edge barriers prevent other traffic from using the lanes, and where I saw it there was a central 'station' for passengers to load on and off the bendy-bus vehicles, which are diesel engined.  You'll note in my picture that the old trolley bus wire support brackets are still in place, useless with the wires removed.

I wondered about the move from electric to diesel - it seems a step backwards, and what the locals think.   Wow - "why take up a whole lane just for the bus". "The concrete barriers cut the city in two / it's hard to turn across".  "It stops at every light and is just as slow". "It cost too much".  "It should have been another metro line - twice as quick, and it would not decrease the road space for other traffic".  "It's a shiny prestige project which the goverment has rushed into place to help it get re-elected.  Looks good, great feel good factor, but achieves too little". "It adds another technology to the mishmash we already have in the City"

There are even protest T shirts [still - for the battle against is lost and it's running] being worn.

Why post this on "The CoffeeShop" - because I see and here echos of Cambridge, and perhaps I see and hear other more distant echos for some of our bigger towns and cities in the South West.

The Macrobus is running, but finnishing works are still being done. I hope to get invited back here some time so that I can report and learn further.

See more about Guadalajara (http://www.wellho.net/mouth/2316_Guadalajara-a-special-tour-of-a-lovely-city.html) and even more pictures including public transport ones (http://www.wellho.net/demo/longpage.html)

They must be relatively new!

I spent time there in 2000 and I dont remember seeing them!

................I guess it was 9 years ago.....how time flies!

This looks like the super-duper-bendy-bus tram look-alike that FirstBus and B&NES Council are trying to foist on the citizens of Bath, using the trackway of the LMS line out of Green Park. The argument is that commuters will more willingly leave their cars at the Newbridge p & r to use a s-d-b-b than the normal p & r bus to save five minutes getting into the city centre.

It's a bus, not a tram. People like to use trams. They don't like buses.

B&NES is proposing to spend squillions on this. One suspects that First Group have been cosying up to them to sell the s-d-b-b which hasn't received great support throughout this country.

Exactly! Every city in the UK that has re-introduced trams has seen success in getting people to use them, so much so that some are expanding their networks.

For a number of years a company tried and tried to re-introduce trams in the Bristol area with a link to Bath along the old LMS but a certain well known Bristol MP helped blocked their plans time and time again until eventually they gave up. So if anyone wonders why transport in the Bath and Bristol area is so rubbish and congested, now you know. An opportunity to bring trams back was there but never taken. I wonder if the main bus company was more involved in bringing trams back than maybe the project may have suceeded?

I don't think that's true. IIRC the plan to use the cyclepath never got as far as being put forward to the government for approval, and certainly when they were presented with a plan for trams, it was rejected, which is why we're going to have a bus scheme instead. So I don't think you can assume the cyclepath plan would have ever happened. Moreover it wasn't just one MP that blocked it..... the objections of thousands of walkers, cyclists and wheelchair users to losing Bristol's only proper cyclepath might have had something to do with it.

Thats one of the major challenges returning former railway land back to being a railway again, people are used to having an open space to walk, cycle etc and don't want to lose it which you can understand particularly in urban areas. Then at the same time everyone wants solutions to congestion and the lack of decent public transport and in many cases its difficult to have both.

This is the question that Bath faces and yet again the proposal for the BRT scheme goes to the council this week:
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/travelandtransport/August-date-set-BRT-meeting/article-1186069-detail/article.html

Such a difficult decision has to be made with time running out to get a plan that is acceptable to all concerned or Bath will lose ^50 million from the government for transport improvements which Bath desperately needs like so many of our towns and cities.

This type of public transport system is gathering momentum in Latin America. I believe the first one started in Bogota which was successful and other cities have taken note. Santiago in Chile I think has introduced this system.

While I would not suggest that railway paths should never be re-converted back to railways or tramways, what annoyed me (and many others) was the idea that the only way to solve our traffic problems was to destroy our only cycle path. Ie, if you were against this one scheme, you were against easing traffic congestion in Bristol. And now the same argument is being used for the bus scheme -- there is no alternative, so if you are against it, you are in favour of congestion.

The fact is that as far as Bristol is concerned, the schemes that would make a real difference are deemed too expensive, so instead we are offered token gestures that will have so little impact on congestion that they will be a complete waste of money. So in fact we might as well carry on doing nothing about it, like we have for the last few decades.

What didn't help in the case of Bristol was that the LibDems in South Gloucester were lobbied by the nimbys in the conurbations north of Bristol to oppose a p&r linked to the Bristol tram scheme and vital to it. Any public transport scheme constrained to just one of CUBA (The County that Used to be Avon)'s unitary authorities will be too small to have any real effect. We need a CUBA-wide Public Transport Authority with real powers.