Again, I know the situation in south Bristol better than the north.
In fairness, Metrobus does promise some fairly useful things:
1) It gets the Ashton P+R traffic onto a separate route south of the harbour
2) It gives some relatively deprived areas of south Bristol, a high-quality bus service, converging on the hospital, leisure centre, college and schools, with more housing due to be built.
3) It gives new developments in Bedminster and Spike Island quality public transport into the city.
4) It will provide a circle service around the city centre.
It is also stealthily paying for numerous road schemes, such as the south Bristol link road, bus lane down Hartcliffe Way, remodelling of the centre and the area by Temple Meads. Though we'll have to wait and see how that all works out.
Yes, it should in theory have plenty of capacity, though it's a shame that the Ashton Avenue Swing Bridge is 8cm too short to fit double deckers underneath. But that capacity is only useful if you have enough drivers and passengers to take advantage of it (buses being easy to procure), there currently seems to be a big shortage of bus drivers and it's not certain that the passengers will turn up in droves, so it could be a very long time before that investment pays off.
Leaving aside the question of are there too many flaws, compromises and bodges to make the thing useful, the question is, even if it was only available for buses, could the money have been better spent on projects that would benefit the whole city? For example, bus shelters and displays have made the bus service far more attractive, but an 'Oyster▸ ' style card and free interchanges/automatic update to a travelcard would make it even more so, evening services seem to be dwindling, and perhaps the bus station would be better beside Temple Meads.
It is a strange public transport project that measures its success in terms of improvements to travelling times for private cars! But such is the crazy world of MetroBust, where words mean what we want them to mean. It may promise much, but it remains to be seen what it delivers. Nothing, in terms of journey time improvements, could not have been delivered far more cheaply, by smartcard payment as in London and a couple of strategic bus lanes. The Centre needed remodelling back to how it used to be, as it never really worked and in fact caused a rise in accidents in the early days - that is officially a separate project to MetroBust, although that may be an accounting device to hide another £9 million of costs.
I take your points, Noggin, and I shall add my fears to them.
1) It is a new partially off road route to the Centre from the Park and Ride, but it will go to Temple Meads first. A survey of pax on the
P&R▸ bus before the Public Inquiry found that almost 80% get off at Anchor Road or the Centre. Their journey times will thus increase. Granted, the commercial centre of Bristol is shuffling gradually to Temple Meads, but by the time it gets there, trains will be running there from Portishead. The projected journey time from there is 17 minutes, by coincidence the same as the projected time from the Long Ashton P&R to Temple Meads - expect a significant fall in P&R custom on the day the first train runs from Possett. First, who are likely to end up running MetroBust, said long before the PI that they didn't see the need for the (mis)guided busway, and would use Hotwells Road instead, especially if there was a charge to use the busway. However, without the guided busway, it wouldn't look like a special public transport scheme, and wouldn't have got the magic DafT funding - people might have mistaken it for a road building scheme, even! The idea of a bus lane in Hotwells Road was deemed impossible, although it has been included in the next tranche of Bristol Better Bus proposals. I didn't realise that double deckers won't fit under the top of Ashton Avenue Bridge - that means the out of town buses won't be going that way, as was originally intended. The bendy buses have been passed on elsewhere, so the AVTM route will have to be single deckers, so drastically cutting the potential capacity on the run from the P&R. That sounds like another own goal.
2) It will give the deprived areas a high quality service, but at the cost of the current provision. MetroBust routes look very strange until you realise that they weave and wind to go near as many houses as possible, so as to boost the figures for the cost-benefit calculations. So from the P&R, as an instance, it progresses not directly to Temple Meads and the Centre, but first into Ashton Vale, which has a high proportion of elderly and disabled residents without cars - brilliant for justifying a service, even if few of them actually want to go to Temple Meads or the Centre. It also has the 24 bus service, 6 bph at peak, 5 bph throughout the day, linking Ashton Vale via Southville and Redcliffe to the Centre, then Easton, Lockleaze, and Southmead Hospital. If MetroBust takes passengers from it at strategic points, what happens to the service for the in-between bits? It is almost certain to be cut in frequency at least - First won't want to compete with itself, and has shown itself to be a business, not a charity. There isn't another service through Southville or Lockleaze, and no other bus from Easton to Southmead Hospital. The same is true of Hengrove and K West, where the 50 and 90 buses will be under similar threat. UWE may find that MetroBust is all it has by way of link to the Centre, and at a premium price compared to the current First Bus day fare.
3) Residents of Spike Island proved to be amongst the most vocal of opponents to MetroBust at the PI. Those who do not walk or cycle to work have the half-hourly 506 service, at least for now.
4) It won't provide anything around the city centre that isn't already there, in the form of the number 8/9 for example.
You have spotted the other downsides. It is far from an answer to Bristol's transport problems, and is largely a waste of £216 million (so far - there may be worse to come!).
Think back to the glossy brochures from around 2010, showing the posh slightly futuristic (couldn't see the wheels) bendy-bus parked outside the Analfoni, offering a "tram-like ride on mainly segregated busways" with free wifi and comfy seats, on a modern low-emission bus with passenger information displays, similar to what has been provided on the Showcase routes for over a year. They had happy passengers, in adjusted numbers for ethnic spread, and the render for the South Bristol Link
Road (SBL), had a single car, a LGBT couple strolling and a cyclist (disabled, no doubt). It was just missing a couple of palm trees. What we will get is a bus-like bus, just like the ones we've got used to over the three years between their introduction and MetroBust opening, running on road-like roads. The SBL will be bumper to bumper with lorries and cars from the moment the Mayor dives for his life after cutting the ribbon, with the occasional MetroBust service heading in the opposite direction to where most people want to go.
It has been compared to Cambridge
BRT▸ , which is 16 miles long in two bits. It is nothing like Cambridge BRT except it uses buses. The only guided bit, the one that First can't see the point of, and which won't take double deckers, is less than 3 miles long and in 4 or 5 bits, meaning the buses will need to slow several times to enter or leave the guided bits. Most of the accidents and incidents that have happened on the Cambridge BRT so far have been around the entry / exit points. It also doesn't connect distant towns to the city, but pootles around the urban area. Cambridge is highly successful in terms of passenger numbers, but it did cost three times the original estimate, and was 3 years late - maybe that is another way in which MetroBust is like Cambridge.
So I have no faith in MetroBust. It is overpriced, over-engineered, and unfortunately over here. At a time when Mayor Marvin is spending his days in darkened rooms trying to find new ways to save a few shekels, he could probably do without being told he has to find a few extra millions to feed the white elephant.
I hope I don't sound ungrateful.
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