Nantes Busway

Busway
Overview
Locale	Nantes, Pays de la Loire
Transit type	Bus rapid transit
Number of lines	2
Number of stations	15
Daily ridership	28.000/day, 7 million/year[1]
Operation
Began operation	2006
Operator(s)	Semitan
Technical
System length	7 km
System map

The Nantes Busways (line 4 and 5) are bus rapid transit lines operating in the city of Nantes, France.^[2] The service was inaugurated on November 6, 2006, and is operated by Semitan. The line 4 runs from Place Foch to Porte de Vertou on a dedicated right-of-way, and interconnects with line 1 of the Nantes Tramway at Duchesse Anne Château station. Four park & ride facilities have been built along the construction of the line to encourage passengers to use public transport. Nantes Busway line 4 is NF certified (NF stands for French Norm). A victim of its own success, Busway line 4 attracts higher ridership than Semitan expected, pushing the system to saturation. Buses are overcrowded at peak times and nearly full off-peak. Semitan tested the Hess LighTram in November 2009 to eventually increase capacity of the system and relieve overcrowding at peak times. Though that solution wasn't implemented at that time, Semitan decided to increase passage frequencies to less than 3 minutes at peak times. If saturation recurs, Busway line 4 might be converted into a Tramway line in the future.^[3]

Such saturation in Nantes would imply that a bottleneck such as the number of landing areas at a crowded busstation^[4] could not be opened up, because without any bottleneck peak buses, frequency per hour per direction for instance in BRT Belo Horizonte corridor Antônio Carlos was 500 in the year 2014^[5] and 600 buses in BRT Rio corridor Presidente Vargas^[6] compared to 20 (in the year 2008) in Nantes. This meant brazilean headways of 7 and 6 seconds opposite to 180 in Nantes with in theory hugh space in case of french need for lower headways and increased bus frequency. Instead of the planned Tramway line Nantes preferred the e-bus HESS lighTram 25 TOSA combined with ultrafast charging (later HITACHI), which started operation in August 2019.^[7]