Transport planners are continually seeking ways in which to balance the conflicting needs for limited road space. There is a trend towards the reallocation of road space to on-road public transport due to its effectiveness in people movement and wider environmental benefits. However, reallocating road space can be a delicate task since it is often at the times of highest demand that space must be taken away from one mode to benefit another. Traditional warrants for provision of facilities such as bus lanes only consider the relative people moving abilities of alternative modes. Yet in practice the benefits of improved reliability and the wider environmental benefits of road space allocation schemes are not a part of traditional approaches to determine if road space reallocation is appropriate. This paper describes a new method for assessing the impact of reallocating road space to public transport. The approach is developed as part of a research project being undertaken in Melbourne, Australia for the local roads management authority, VicRoads. The paper includes a review of previous approaches in this area and identifies a new methodology which evaluates a full range of benefits and costs of public transport priority schemes in order to identify appropriate road space reallocation. The paper reports on recent findings in the application of this approach and how revised warrants, using a more comprehensive approach to valuing the full benefits and costs of priority schemes for reallocation of road space in relation to bus lanes, would look. For the covering abstract see ITRD E128680.
Samenvatting