Bus lane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A bus (only) lane is a lane on a road restricted to buses, and usually emergency vehicles or taxicabs and possibly high occupancy vehicles or bicycles .
The aim of a bus only lane is to give priority to buses and save journey time in places where roads are congested with other traffic. A bus lane is not necessarily very long, as it may only be used to 'detour' a single congestion point. However, some cities have built large stretches of bus lanes which in some places, e.g. Almere, Barcelona and Singapore, amount to a separate local road system.
Bus lanes are normally created when the road in question is both likely to be congested as well as heavily traveled by bus. Entire roads can be designated as bus lanes (Oxford Street in London), allowing only buses, taxis and delivery vehicles[1]; or a contra-flow bus lane can allow buses to travel in the opposite direction to other vehicles[2]. Sometimes, bus lanes receive different set of traffic signals as well. Some bus lanes operate on certain times of the day only, usually during rush-hour, allowing all vehicles at other times.
The world's first bus-only lanes were established in 1962 in the German city of Hamburg. Other large German cities soon followed, and the implementation of bus lanes was officially sanctioned in the German highway code in 1971. Many experts from other countries (among one of the first, Japan) studied the German example and then went forth to implement similar solutions in their own countries.
Bus lanes can be controversial, between the pro- and anti- public transport lobbies.
