Bus Turnouts

Bus turnouts are bus stop areas that are recessed from the thoroughfare. The turnout provides an en route bus with an off-street service point that does not interfere with traffic movement and provides a safe waiting area for transit users.

Bus turnouts advantages:
Advantages:
• Allows traffic to proceed around the bus, reducing delay for general traffic
• Maximizes vehicular capacity of roads
• saves fuel by reducing idling vehicles
• Clearly defines the bus stop
• Passenger loading and unloading can be conducted in a more relaxed manner
• Eliminates potential rearend accidents

Bus turnouts are desirable where one of the following conditions exist:
• Peak period boarding is high.
• Average peak period dwell time exceeds 20 seconds per bus.
• Where buses are expected to layover at the end of a trip.
• Where there is adequate space for turnout length and depth given to allow a bus to
safely exit and enter into the flow of traffic.

Guidelines for bus turnouts
• Turnout should not be placed at signalized intersections but should be in the mid strech
• Twelve foot width is desirable to reduce sideswipe accidents, ten foot width is
minimum.
• Turnout should be sections laid in concrete as oil leaks and constant braking by heavy busses cannot be sustained by asphalt.

One of the very successful turn outs in bangalore is the one on mysore road as we land from flyover, front of gopalan mall. This was mada by the virtue of the truck turnout of the now defunct toll gate!
One of the failed designs is at the junction next to Indiranagar BDA cplx..on OMR..its at a junction and so it failed..

There was a plan to improve the bus bays in blr..wonder if we could implement this more scientifically! Google has many docs on the design of turn outs..hope its used!