Rumors are swirling around the Ogden BRT line and the specifics of how it will all shake out.
For those new to the project:
http://www.rideuta.com/About-UTA/Act.../Ogden-WSU-BRT
TL;DR: The route is 5.3 miles long, or less than half the length of UVX. Like UVX, the dedicated lane portion is going to be as close to 51% as possible in order to keep costs down while still qualifying the route as BRT:
The dedicated lanes are all on the Weber State end of the line, while the downtown Ogden portion of the line will be all shared-lanes. So it looks like they are building exclusive lanes where they have the space for them rather than where they are actually needed, since the downtown portion of the route would benefit much more from exclusive lanes than the suburban part.
In other words, they are building this project backwards.
Service is expected to have a maximum headway of 10 minutes, with a maximum of 15 minutes. This is a surprisingly small improvement over the existing bus line, which runs at 15 minutes all day.
Here's some more pictures from the overview:
As you can see, these are side-stations, which will be used in the downtown area, but - and here is where we descend into the rumors -
also in the exclusive lane portion of the project.
Rumors: There will be no center-stations like the UVX route has. They will all be side stations, and buses will only have doors on the right side, like normal buses. Also, the buses are going to be 40-foot long buses (regular length) and not articulated buses like UVX. This is because UTA is highly considering using battery-electric buses. The bus charger currently being installed at Salt Lake Central Station is going to provide a verification that the UTA organization can handle electric buses, but once this box is checked then the Ogden BRT line can officially be UTA's first all-electric bus line.
I love it. Fiat Electrus!
What this means for infrastructure, though, is that the stations must be on the right side of the road, since no batter-electric bus manufacturer has yet created a bus with boarding on both sides. Also, with boarding only on the right side, any bus can be used as a substitute in the case that the electric buses all get recalled or something.
Anyway, at stations where there are exclusive median lanes, the station layout will be similar to a MAX station, specifically the one at 35th south and 36th west:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6956.../data=!3m1!1e3
In fact, this line is going to be far more similar to MAX than it will be to UVX. A part of the project will involve building a
new road through the middle of the WSU campus, which is just insane (in both good and bad ways). This new road will have to curve around buildings, sidewalks, pedestrian features, ect. and it isn't going to be a fast ride. 15 mph in some locations due to sharp turns. The stations will be in
Super Ideal locations as a result, but the ride between them will not be very, well, rapid.
Also, because the new bus-only road will be so thin, in some locations it will need to be reduced to 1 lane, and buses will need to take turns. Just like our single-tracked FrontRunner, or S-Line, or... MAX. This single-lane portion is a main reason why 10 minutes is expected to be the maximum frequency possible. MAX also has a single bi-directional exclusive bus lane in the middle of 35th south, and one of the main reasons they aren't using it anymore is that schedule got changed to meet TRAX trains but this didn't jive with the timing of the single-lane portion. Which is frankly stupid.
(An aside for MAX: if lane timing is the problem, then there are easy fixes! Have eastbound buses use the lane in the morning and westbound buses use it in the PM! Don't just abandon it!)
Anyway, this Ogden BRT line is going to be a crazy-weird mixed up animal, and I already love it. I would have preferred more exclusive lanes in more congested areas, but I am told that signal priority for buses will make up for the lack of lanes in those areas. So perhaps we might see something like the video I posted above, which would be very useful for UDOT to experiment with so that other routes can get similar infrastructure too.
It's exciting to have another BRT line enter the final development phase!
