Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beaches

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GazzaOak
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by GazzaOak »

mandonov wrote:
Extending the B-Line to Newport will make it easier for customers from the surrounding area to travel to and from the Sydney CBD.

Why not just extend to Avalon then?
I don't think its could have the capability to handle the bends, that would be the government excuse
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Stu
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Stu »

I'm interested in seeing which new routes will be used to provide additional services during special events. One example is route 199 replacing the portion of route 155 between Mona Vale and Manly.

Routes that are earmarked to be cancelled that currently have additional services during special events: 175, L80, 183, L84 & L85.

Additional route 178 services for sure and maybe some additional B-Line services.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by gascoyne »

The website talks of 300 parking spaces at Narrabeen and Dee Why. But the website doesn't seem to be updated frequently. Does anyone have details like where the DY carpark is (I understand they've bought a site and will build a multi-storey carpark on it) and whether there are other car parks? How many car spaces?
mandonov
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by mandonov »

Around 900 in total
74 at Mona Vale
250 at Warriewood
144 at Narrabeen
120 at Dee Why integrated into the local PCYC development
250 at Brookvale integrated into the Community Health Centre development
150 at Manly Vale

There are more frequent updates at the 'Get involved' page: http://yoursay.b-line.transport.nsw.gov.au/get-involved
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Swift »

They need to put in an indicator board informing of how many spaces remaining out of the total and red and green marker lights above the spaces. They should also develop an app linked to these boards in real time.
Wish they did this for the Woy Woy Railway Station commuter car park so you don't waste so much time making your way to the rooftop level only to find that full also.
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mandonov
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by mandonov »

Yeah I guess that's the one thing that shopping centre car parks are good at.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by robert »

About a month after asking about the B-line's route number, the answer is no answer.
Hi there,
Thanks for taking the time to visit Your Say B-Line Northern Beaches and asking us a question.
You asked:
'Will the B-line have a route number?'
Our response has now been posted on the site.
Our response:
Hi Robert
Route number has not been confirmed as yet. We will inform community opportunely with regards this late this year 2017.
Thanks
~ Andrea
For information about private & Government bus routes in Sydney, look at http://www.sydneybusroutes.com
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Tongans101
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Tongans101 »

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/0 ... -australia

There are two in the country, 10 more to arrive in the next couple of weeks flowed by the next 26 pretty quickly after. Production is going well.
85 seats 15 standees.
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swtt
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by swtt »

Can't believe they're sticking to this official 15 standees rubbish.

These buses can take up to 120 easily if the official standee limits were raised to 35.

If we were also to not have two wheelchair spaces that would increase that even further.

An artic would do around 100 if fully packed out but taking up around 30-40% more road space.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by tonyp »

swtt wrote:Can't believe they're sticking to this official 15 standees rubbish.

These buses can take up to 120 easily if the official standee limits were raised to 35.

If we were also to not have two wheelchair spaces that would increase that even further.

An artic would do around 100 if fully packed out but taking up around 30-40% more road space.
That limit on the deckers would be down to either axle load or our friends at the RTBU. I tend to go by Perth for an honest capacity figure, which puts an Australian 18 metre artic at 110 to 120 passengers. In Europe they're rated up to 160 but they have more doors to make that a practical proposition.

Road space occupied by a bus is only relevant to those interested in dedicating roads to private vehicles and getting public transport off the road to either above it or underground. Nobody in the public transport arena in the 21st century should be apologetic about the footprint of a tram or bus. That's something that we left behind in the 1950s.

Artics and deckers serve two different functions and each isn't a substitute for the other. An artic is a high capacity, high turnover vehicle for busy routes where people are getting on and off all the time. A decker is a lower total capacity, but high seating capacity vehicle for longer distance work with lower turnover en route. So far they're applying them to the correct task in Sydney (the Premier has said as much). However, the artic fleet should definitely not be reduced as there's plenty of work for them in what they do best.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Tim Williams »

I wouldn't wish a higher seating capacity on passengers - they do this now in Hong Kong and the legroom on the top deck (especially at the front on the new Gemilang's of KMB) is not good - as someone has pointed out, it is the daft low standees allowance that unreasonably restricts the overall capacity.

In Singapore the Wright/Volvo's seat 55 top deck, 27 lower deck + 51 standees = 133 in total. In Hong Kong the Gemilang/MAN's seat 59 top deck, 31 lower deck + 44 standees = 134 in total. The AD Enviro 500's and the Wrights are very similar (varying mainly on standee's) - it is only in the last couple of years that HK operators have squeezed that extra row in on the top deck and comfort has suffered. I think that the overall capacity of the new 12.8 mtr Enviro 500's is 152 or 155 passengers with 63 seated on the top deck - really spectacular people movers!

So the 85 seated capacity for Sydney seems fine - standees, as noted above = a poor allowance.

The Bustech CDI's seat 90 but they are longer at 12.3 mtrs compared to 12 mtrs for the standard Singapore/HK DD's. However the legroom. at the front on the top deck is a bit tight.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by tonyp »

Tim Williams wrote: In Singapore the Wright/Volvo's seat 55 top deck, 27 lower deck + 51 standees = 133 in total. In Hong Kong the Gemilang/MAN's seat 59 top deck, 31 lower deck + 44 standees = 134 in total. The AD Enviro 500's and the Wrights are very similar (varying mainly on standee's) - it is only in the last couple of years that HK operators have squeezed that extra row in on the top deck and comfort has suffered. I think that the overall capacity of the new 12.8 mtr Enviro 500's is 152 or 155 passengers with 63 seated on the top deck - really spectacular people movers!

So the 85 seated capacity for Sydney seems fine - standees, as noted above = a poor allowance.

The Bustech CDI's seat 90 but they are longer at 12.3 mtrs compared to 12 mtrs for the standard Singapore/HK DD's. However the legroom. at the front on the top deck is a bit tight.
You're comparing apples and oranges in different jurisdictions. One can point to typical single artics in Europe rated for 160 passengers, or even up to 190 for the MB Capacity.
SOR bus Prague.jpeg
Presumably the axle load is acceptable over there (the Capacity has twin axles on the trailer) but not here. These European artics are not only spectacular people-movers but also excellent at turning over large numbers of passengers quickly at stops due to their fully low floor and 4 to 5 double doors spread out from front to back. Try that in a two-door decker with the added problem of an additional heap of people upstairs having to negotiate stairs on the way in and out. Deckers are spectacular long-distance people-movers, so long as too many people are not constantly boarding and exiting along the route.

Regarding standing capacity, you have to treat the decker as a standard 12 metre bus that happens to have another deck on top. So if you have 50 standing on the bottom deck by Singapore standards, that's equivalent to 50 standing (about 90 seated and standing) in a 12 metre single deck which in the typical Australian bus is too crowded to be practical for only two doors and part high-floor. The bus doesn't function well with that sort of crowd. Add to that another 50-60 people upstairs rising and descending through the mass on the bottom deck with only two doors and you've got a seriously dysfunctional bus, unless they're all staying on board for the whole trip.

Sydney's double deck trains have the same issue. They've live-tested them to see how many people they can get on board and they can squeeze in 1,700 - but only if nobody gets on and off along the journey. If the want the train to function with regular stops, they have to knock that capacity down to 1,200. Deckers really have a specific place in the transit hierarchy and that revolves around seats and long distance. Trying to get lots of standees into them defeats their purpose. And that's aside from the axle load (or union?) issue. I would think 15-20 would be as much as they should be handling as standees on the bottom deck from a practical perspective.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Tim Williams »

I don't particularly disagree with you - I think 15, 20 maybe standees on a 12 mtr DD is enough, despite what is normal practice in Singapore and HK. As I have said elsewhere getting Australians out of cars (despite traffic congestion) requires comfortable public transport, which to me = seats! So a 55 seat artic with 4 or 5 doors and big numbers of standees would be a pointless exercise for this longer distance B line service.

Singapore and HK use DD's on short a well as longer express runs and the locals have little choice but to use public transport of what ever type is provided. Due to a government tax and bidding for car licences system a new Toyota Corolla or Mazda 3 will set you back $124,000 SGD in Singapore - so cars are out of reach for a lot of people. And because of very dense populations and limited road space in both places artics are not the answer. The loadings and unloadings in both by DD's seem quite reasonable to me but in Singapore they are trialing a 3 door twin staircase MAN to speed up passenger movement (AD also produced an engineless Enviro 500 in the same configuration).

I think artics work well in Adelaide with varying passengers loads and wide often straight roads, but crush multi-door artic concept of Western and Eastern Europe and South America hasn't really caught on in big numbers elsewhere - I have relations in Finland who absolutely hate standing in a bouncing artic (which what they think of them).

So, I think the MANs are a great choice for this express service and whilst our axle weight allowances really are out of step with the World, the lower standing loads will mean less people are stuck with uncomfortable journeys. I have just spent a little over a week in HK and the crush loads on their MRT train system are a sight to behold and experience - but not every day.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by tonyp »

I think the double deckers in Sydney are being applied to the right services that are appropriate for them and, as you say, seating is the important issue; standing is relatively inconsequential because nobody wants to stand for long distances, nor would you want them to. I don't have a problem with deckers being used for that sort of service.

What concerns me is (so far non-specific) talk of getting rid of artics in Sydney. Artics are the trams for when you don't have trams - high capacity, high-turnover vehicles that sustain very busy operations over shorter distances. Single-artics are the equivalent of Melbourne's Z and A class trams. If you don't have them then you need to start building tram lines and they've managed to turn that into a very expensive investment in NSW, so we won't see too many tramways. Thus the artic has to stay (and there needs to be more of them) because there's nothing else apart from trams that can possibly even partly fill the capacity gap between rigid buses and trains.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Swift »

What will happen to Palm Beach services? Will the L90 be business as usual or will it change?
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by swtt »

Swift wrote:What will happen to Palm Beach services? Will the L90 be business as usual or will it change?
Please read the proposal.

http://yoursay.b-line.transport.nsw.gov ... rvice-plan
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by GazzaOak »

Swift wrote:What will happen to Palm Beach services? Will the L90 be business as usual or will it change?
Will be on a hourly basis off peak and weekends.
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Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beaches

Post by Richard290 »

GazzaOak wrote:
Swift wrote:What will happen to Palm Beach services? Will the L90 be business as usual or will it change?
Will be on a hourly basis off peak and weekends.
Alternative service is via new route 199 which will run all-stops to Manly Wharf via Pittwater Road.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by simonl »

That is a bit daft isn't it? Can't they just kill the l90 like they are killing routes such as the 373. There's no consistency in that combination.

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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Swift »

simonl wrote:That is a bit daft isn't it? Can't they just kill the l90 like they are killing routes such as the 373. There's no consistency in that combination.

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This is the first I have heard this re: 373.
I think the L90 will be going. I have never heard of an off peak only trunk run, let alone a limited stops service.
I don't see that arrangement lasting.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by boronia »

Just some token service to "appease the natives"
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by simonl »

Swift wrote:This is the first I have heard this re: 373.
It has been in the light rail plans for years. You wonder if anyone doing the planning ever actually caught the services they are chopping. One of the busiest stops on the 373 is at Alison/Belmore Rds which is not near enough to the tram.

Anyway, we're off topic here.
boronia wrote:Just some token service to "appease the natives"
The sort of thing they need to stop doing. Only leads to lasting confusion and mediocrity.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by mandonov »

It's also strangely the last route to keep the Lxx designation on the Northern Beaches. I seriously doubt there's nostalgia for the Hell90.
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Swift »

boronia wrote:Just some token service to "appease the natives"
What? They are worried they will turn to Labour? Haha haha!
Talk about imaginary clout the locals hold.

I wonder, will this speed up travel times from Palm Beach to the city over the L90?
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Re: Northern Beaches BRT: B-Line to transform Northern Beach

Post by Fleet Lists »

kypros1992 wrote:Bus service plan (was on the site but removed on the weekend, should have told someone about cache)

Image
This is part of the Your new Northern Beaches Bus Network booklet which is available at https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com ... 1496797112 and archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20170716023 ... 1496797112

Route L85 is replaced by route 185.

According the summary of the changes
Introduction of B-Line bus service • 11 stops (Newport, Mona Vale, Warriewood, Narrabeen, Collaroy, Dee Why, Brookvale, Manly Vale, Spit Junction, Neutral Bay Junction, CBD)• Services run until 12:30am every day • 10 minute frequency – all week until 11:00pm• Additional services during commuter peak periods.

20 routes changed
135, 145, E50,155, 156, L60 (E60), 168, E68, E69, E70, E71, L80 (E80), 182, E83, 185, E85, E88, E89, L90, 236

4 new routes• 146 Wheeler Heights to Manly• E54 Mona Vale to Milsons Point• E75 Warringah Mall (Pittwater Road) to City• 199 Palm Beach to Manly

40 routes will remain unchanged
23 routes discontinued with alternative services available
Opportunities for flexible transport options to be considered
Bus service improvements to support the new Northern Beaches Hospital to be delivered in 2018
No changes to bus services operated by Forest Coachlines
Information is included for each individual route but too large to include here.
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