Adelaide O-Bahn

On Friday I travelled on Adelaide's guided busway, the O-Bahn. Its success was one of the reasons we in Cambridgeshire were given a busway rather than a reopened railway. You can read about the O-Bahn here and here. The Cambridgeshire and Adelaide busways are very different in terms of length, volume of traffic, design and speed. The Adelaide route is shorter than Cambridgeshire, but there are no flat road crossings requiring buses to slow down frequently. Roads and footpaths are carried over or under the O-Bahn on bridges, but there is a break at the intermediate stops. A yellow line is provided to help drivers to join the guideway efficiently.

Top speed is 100kph compared with 90kph in Cambridgeshire.

The track is constructed differently. Unlike Cambridgeshire it is not laid level with the ground, but is raised up by a metre or so on conrete piles which are sunk into the ground by as much as 4 metres. The piles in turn support transverse sleepers upon which the track is laid. I felt the ride was smoother than on the Cambridgeshire busway, which may be to do with the way the concrete tracks are supported.

Bus service frequency is higher in Adelaide than Cambridgeshire, and currently it is carrying around 8 million passengers a year. Adelaide runs only single-decker buses, including some bendy-buses. There are no double-deckers. As in Cambridgeshire, O-Bahn services are affected by road conditions off the busway, but Adelaide has wide streets, and the city centre has a grid pattern, so some of the problems that beset Cambridge seem not to be replicated in Adelaide. There are only 3 stops on the O-Bahn - Kemzig, Paradise Interchange and Tea Tree Interchange (they are more like mini bus stations than 'bus stops')- and the guideway breaks off at these points. This is a view from Tea Tree Interchange looking toward the start of the busway.

It is possible for express buses to overtake slower services at these places. Timetable boards are provided at stops but there are no real-time infomation displays which have proved so useful to Cambridgeshire busway travellers.