Assessing the guided bus
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Any public transport system which promises to have 25 per cent of its passengers drawn from former car commuters can be assured of busmen's interest at a time when passenger decline is an almost universal problem. Does the guided bus, of which CM is able to give details this week, offer new hope for public transport as a viable system? Certainly the prospectus prepared by Throughways Transport Ltd. makes good reading in this respect, and it is this company's system study which suggests that a quarter of the passengers in an urban application might be former motorists. Individual transport undertakings will make their own assessment of the system's potential, but with the combined talents of Leyland, Sperry, EMI, McAlpine, NBC and Hill Samuel involved in the consortium it certainly cannot be dismissed as a lightweight project. Also to be weighed is the known realism of the consortium's chairman, Sir Miles Thomas.
At present the system is little more than a detailed evaluation produced after months of expert study and calculation. It has the great advantage of using well-tried components— such as the Panther single-deck bus, and structures with which McAlpine is familiar. Another fundamental recommendation is that, unlike the monorail which has been described as a solution looking for a problem, the whole guided-bus system is designed to provide an answer to the current need for public transport as flexible as the bus but having a high capacity to match railway capabilities.
Possibly the consortium sees its biggest potential in offering complete systems to developing countries where urban land values have not yet become astronomical, but no doubt British applications will be examined, too; with the NBC and Leyland involved this is inevitable. And perhaps the system's great advantage of using converted buses rather than demanding heavy investment in some totally new vehicle will attract attention in the PTAs as well.