[sustran] Rail or bus

[Jain Alok]

Dear Eric and Jonathan,

Some interesting arguments in your mails about rail vs. buses. No doubt I
have enjoyed your discussions but it has gone a bit philosophical and
leading to a bit of activism. Why should this be a rail vs. bus discussion?
Why can't this be a rail plus bus discussion? There comes a time when
passenger traffic in a corridor becomes so heavy that rail becomes the
logical choice. You have cited European and US examples but in Asia, Hong
Kong is a good example (for the record, I work for a HK railway company).

Buses and rail co-exist and both provide fantastic service. The prices are
comparable (so the poor vs rich issue is not a prime concern). Bus lanes are
provided in corridors with heavy bus traffic. Usually, at these corridors
the railway loadings are higher too. While nobody can argue about the point
to point service provided by buses, a corridor requiring over 80,000 pphpd
capacity cannot be served by buses (theoretically yes, some may argue, but
practically speaking, it would create chaos and service reliability would go
haywire). Railways can provide this service. In most of the circumstances if
the journey is about 15-20km or more, buses can't beat the railway travel in
terms of journey time.

Ideally, depending on the demand a new area can be served by buses most
efficiently but there comes a threshold beyond which the backbone movements
should be moved over to fast, trunk routes such as railways and buses can
still supplement and provide local service.

I have seen Bangkok system (I studied in AIT, worked in Bangkok briefly, and
visit once in while) and the problem with railways is not because they do
not provide efficient service but the prices. And these prices have to be
kept high because there is no committment to reduce the parallel running bus
services. Not the non-aircon services, which serve an entirely different
segment which may require a certain level of subsidy, but the aircon buses
which charge much higher but are bleeding anyway. The alternative would be
to cancel these inefficient aircon bus routes in exchange for a price
reduction on railway and both will live happily thereafter. Institutional
issues may be difficult to resolve but there is need for somebody with a
political courage to take the tough step instead of empty rhetorics (such as
the one of solving Bangkok's traffic problems in 3 months time. Reminds me
of Harry Potter!!).

Keep up the good work.
Alok Jain

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