On the O-Bahn with Keith Conlon
It is still billed as the fastest guided busway in the world, as it beams the burghers of Adelaide's sprawling North-East suburbs into the city centre. Up to thirty thousand passengers a day, enjoy a 12-kilometre trip in about half the time it would take them to drive. The scenery is a bonus for the regulars, but the combination of technology and a park setting all the way has turned the O-Bahn into a tourist ride as well as a public transport route.
Visitors catch the bus in the centre of the city, and for the first couple of kilometres that is what it is - just another bus steered through to the city edge and along its parklands. That takes about 8 minutes.
Once the bus takes its curious tourists onto the guided concrete track section, the smoother, faster ride is quickly evident. With only two stops, Klemzig station and the Paradise Interchange, the 12-kilometre O-Bahn route is covered in just 12 minutes! You have been whipped at 100 kph to the major regional shopping centre, Tea Tree Plaza.
Echoing Shakespeare's observations on love, however, the course of this transport corridor did not run smooth. 30 years ago, Adelaide was flirting with freeways. They were rejected, and the next suitor for the fledging North-East suburbs was a light rail system. It was passed up by an incoming Liberal government for a mysterious German model!
In 1981, it chose to adapt an experimental guided bus concept developed by Daimler-Benz. The shorter and slower demonstration track in Essen is still operating.
O-Bahn is intended to mean 'omnibus way'. You can see how it works mechanically - and as a public transport system that is defying world trends - as the bus rolls into the Paradise Interchange, halfway along the track. The bus itself is upgraded for engine-power, braking and headlights..and it has its secret weapon on each side next to its front wheels.
A small guide-wheel protrudes and makes contract with the vertical section of an L shaped concrete prefabricated track. The bus tyre runs on the base of the L, guided in a high-speed hands-free smooth run up the Torrens River valley.
The Paradise Interchange buzzes with O-Bahn buses leaving the track and heading off down suburban roads, spreading on into the suburbs. Other routes drop passengers and circle outwards again. There is also room for almost 500 park and ride cars. The O-Bahn therefore serves not one route, but up to 15 as they fan out to come closer to commuters.
The linear park through several kilometres of the Torrens River valley in the inner suburbs of Adelaide is a major bonus for thousands of residents. It was dreamed about before the rapid transit system was planned somewhat controversially, to run along its potential path. What the O-Bahn did in practice was produce $6 million out of its overall $98m to landscape the valley.
Before its first stage completion in 1986, the Torrens Valley was a rubbish-ridden, overgrown gutter that you could not access - and would not want to. Now, 60,000 trees and shrubs have turned into an urban forest in parts, and joggers, walkers and cyclists share a slice of rural atmosphere - interrupted only by the whirr of a bus zipping along the narrow two-way ribbon that slithers through.
The Torrens takes a more sedate meandering path, and so eleven bridges were built to get the O-Bahn over the stream. There are some two dozen bridges in all to keep the suburban traffic and pedestrians separate from the high-speed dedicated corridor. Peter Gray is one of 200 drivers who operate on the O-Bahn. He has done it since the first stage opened in 1986, and he still enjoys the run to the terminus at Tea Tree Plaza. The final stage is now ten years old.
He has seen passenger numbers surge as the Golden Grove hills have disappeared under houses. The increased traffic on the Main North East Road makes the busway more and more attractive. And his habit of handing out O-Bahn postcards to international trippers has seen him gather a scrapbook of compliments from all over the world. There are plenty of transport experts who have made the speedy and attractive run, too. A number of British cities have mooted a similar system, and in Nagoya, Japan, they seem keen to apply the Adelaide model. Just this week an engineer from Oregon in the U.S.A was on board for a test-ride.
If they ask Peter Gray, they will hear high praise - happy customers, stress-free drivers and a great view along the way in the bargain. The longest and fastest guided busway in the world is also very cheap to ride! During the day, off-peak a $1.60 ticket buys you a 2-hour pass. That is definitely long enough for a trip to TTP, a shop and a coffee, and another sit-back to watch the park go by.
