Express route

Express route (特快路線) refers to bus routes that are less time-consuming than regular routes with similar itineraries. These routes are usually organised on a point-to-point basis to reduce travel time. Bus companies usually set higher fare levels for express routes because they have fewer stops, resulting in a more focused service area and quicker arrival at the destination.

Features

Generally, express routes adopt "point-to-point" routing via expressways, trunk roads or tunnels, with fewer detours and stops, and provide direct "one-way" service between two districts (except for "pseudoexpress", see "Disadvantages and Disputes"), thus concentrating the passenger base. The numbering of express routes used to end in X, but with the popularization of express routes, many existing routes have been reorganized to use a more direct route, but still retaining their original numbering, e.g. Citybus Route 8, KMB Route 40. In addition, a number of new routes were already operating on a point-to-point basis (e.g. Citybus Route 798, KMB Route 277E), so many express routes no longer have an "X" suffix.

The vast majority of express routes are daytime routes, with very few regular overnight bus routes providing express services (e.g. Citybus Route N8P). As overnight bus routes have higher operating costs and limited patronage, they are often detoured to serve more passengers or to save tunnel tolls. The overnight bus routes introduced in recent years mainly focus on serving the higher demand period after midnight, and may take expressways, trunk roads or minimize stops (e.g. KMB Route 271S, KMB Route 293S, KMB Route N41X, etc.) in order to reach their destinations faster than the conventional overnight routes.

Express routes does not necessarily pass through expressways or tunnels, but can be considered as elevated roads such as the Connaught Road West Flyover, the West Kowloon Corridor, or Trunk Roads such as Gloucester Road which are designed to be divided into separate roads and do not have traffic signals or speed limits and are more lenient. Conversely, trunk roads or tunnels are not necessarily expressways, e.g. Lion Rock Tunnel, Cross-Harbour Tunnel. Traveling through expressways or tunnels is also not necessarily an express route, e.g. Citybus Route 85 only passes through a small section of the Island Eastern Corridor between A Kung Ngam and Heng Fa Chuen, which in turn does not have an express effect.

History

See also: Semi-express routes

The semi-direct routes first appeared in the 1960s, before the emergence of express routes. At that time, the road arterial network was not yet complete, and there were no expressways. These "semi-direct routes" passed through the same streets as the normal routes, with fewer stops on the "semi-direct routes" to speed up travel time, while the normal routes were almost "stop-and-go". However, with the completion of expressways in 1978 and the substantial improvement of road networks, "express routes" were born in the 1980s and gradually replaced semi-direct routes in the following two decades, becoming the general trend of bus route development nowadays. The term "express" originated from the title "special express" given to the semi-direct routes operated by CMB from the late 1960s to 1971.

Hong Kong Island

See also: Island Eastern Corridor#Eastern Corridor Express

The Island Eastern Corridor, the only expressway on Hong Kong Island, opened on 8 June in 1984. CMB operated 720, 721, 722, 780, 781, a total of five express routes connecting Central with the Eastern District. Initially, these express routes were special services with white text on green background on the station signage, operated only during weekday peak hours, and charged higher fares than the corresponding ordinary routes. There was widespread controversy over pricing at the time of their opening, and no children's concessions were offered until September 1998, when they were introduced.

Fierce competition

The first regular route to use the X prefix was CMB Route 10X via Connaught Road West and Connaught Road Central at-grade roads, but it was categorized as a semi-through route using yellow with red letters. The only X-tailed non-temporary routes operated by CMB in the 1990s were the routes 10X, 43X and 94X, the first two of which were categorised as semi-through routes and the latter as normal routes. CMB's semi-direct routes and the "Eastern Corridor Express" were special services with no child concessions until NWFB took over.

The late 1990s was the "warring states period" for buses on Hong Kong Island. Both CMB and Citybus introduced new express routes or modified their existing routes into express routes to attract more passengers. The most classic example is that about half a year after Citybus started its Route 8X, which in turn led CMB to reroute its original semi-direct route 80 via the Island Eastern Corridor in order to maintain its competitiveness. Subsequently, due to the emergence of NWFB's new route 8P, the patronage of the original trunk route 8 dropped drastically, and it was eventually necessary to fully convert it into an express route in 2006, with the terminus moving from Siu Sai Wan (Island Resort) to Heng Fa Chuen, and at the same time abandoning its service along the routing from King's Road to Shau Kei Wan Road.

Other express routes including 2X, 5X and 43X were also introduced in the 1990s. Starting from the conversion of all "Eastern Corridor Express" routes to whole-day service and the introduction of child concessions on all NWFB routes, the express routes have gradually become more popular and are no longer regarded as special services.

Development in recent years

With the popularity of express routes, a number of express routes have been added in recent years, mainly via Route 4, and many of them have been changed to whole-day operation, including 5X, 18P and 82X routes, etc., resulting in the loss of passengers of the original routes. Nowadays, express routes have become a new trend of bus development on Hong Kong Island, such as routes 18X and 88X between Eastern and Western districts, and routes 33X, 49X and 99X between Southern and Eastern districts, and so on. Citybus' express routes that pass through the Island Eastern Corridor but do not cross the Victoria Harbour are usually labeled as "Eastern Corridor Express", while routes 18X and 88X, which pass through the Central - Wan Chai Bypass for both directions, are even packaged as "East-West Express" to highlight the fact that these two routes run directly between the Eastern and Central-Western Districts. In addition, although Connaught Road West Flyover is not an expressway, it is included within the Route 4 as the Island Eastern Corridor, and the speed limit is even more relaxed than that of the Island Eastern Corridor and as a result, express routes also run through the bridge. One example is Citybus Route 30X, which is touted as a "Route 4 Express".

On the other hand, the emergence of express routes also reduces the patronage of the original routes, and necessitates a reduction in frequency and number of buses, or even a shortening of the routes, in order to release additional resources for the express routes, including 5, 18, 82, etc., as in the above example. The commissioning of West Island Line and South Island Line in 2014 and 2016, as well as the opening of the Central - Wan Chai Bypass in early 2019 to divert traffic away from the trunk roads on the northern part of Hong Kong Island, had a significant impact on bus services on Hong Kong Island.

Kowloon and the New Territories

The main article of this section is New Territories Express Routes.

The first two express routes in Kowloon were 1st generation Route 14X and 1st generation 15X (today's 215X routes), which were introduced on 6 November, 1982. Prior to this, New Territories routes, even expressways such as Tuen Mun Road (e.g. 66 and 68 routes), were not specifically categorized, while routes passing through later completed highways and tunnels (e.g. Shing Mun Tunnels, Tsuen Wan Road, Tate's Cairn Tunnel, etc.) were regarded as express routes, and recognized as such by the prefix "X". The routes are recognized with an "X" at the end of the alphabet. As on the other side of the border, express routes are also considered as special services, and like cross-harbour routes and air-conditioned deluxe routes, no children's half-fare was introduced before 31 March 1991.

The KMB routes and cross-harbour bus routes have an express service category in the Scale of Fares, which allows them to charge higher fares than ordinary routes, but the air-conditioned bus service does not have such a category, so the express route category has disappeared altogether, and the same fare scale is used as for the other routes, i.e., based on the distance travelled only, and therefore some express routes are cheaper than trunk routes, which have a similar origin and destination (e.g., KMB'S route 68M that passes through Tai Lam Tunnel [$11.5] and Route 53 via the Castle Peak Road [$12.2]). However, some express routes still charge higher fares, for example, routes 268B and 269B via the West Kowloon Highway both charge [$20.8], while Route 69X from Tin Shui Wai South to Nathan Road via Cheung Sha Wan Road charges only [$17.2]. While Route 268X serving between Hung Shui Kiu, Yuen Long and Mong Kok, Jordan via the West Kowloon Corridor is faster than the Route 69X , it charges a lower fare of [$16.2], which makes the difference in the fare differential of express routes more obvious.

Recent developments

With the successive commissioning of a number of railways, the travelling pattern of passengers has also changed. The patronage of some routes has dropped drastically, and the express routes that overlap with the MTR lines have not been spared. The extension of the West Rail Line to Hung Hom Station in 2009 has dealt a heavy blow to the patronage of Route 268B. Although the route takes Route 3 directly between Tsim Sha Tsui and the Northwest New Territories, it has lost a large number of passengers to the faster railways and its service has been drastically reduced.

In response to the further capture of the public transport market by railways, KMB has implemented measures such as regional bus route rationalisation, whereby a number of meandering routes have been reorganised to run via trunk roads, expressways or elevated roads to increase speed (e.g. Routes 40, 41A and 63X), or have been split and replaced by faster routes (e.g. Route 70X has been replaced by the service-enhanced Route 277X, and the new Routes 277E and 277P, and also Route 268X split from Route 68X); on the other hand also introducing more interchange concessions to tie in with the opening of three large-scale bus interchanges, namely the Tuen Mun Road Interchange, Tsing Sha Highway Interchange and Tseung Kwan O Tunnel Interchange, in order to increase patronage and optimise the use of resources. On the other hand, NWFB entered Kowloon and New Territories East by launching the "Tseung Kwan O Routes in Kowloon", in which Route 796X and other routes travelling via the Kwun Tong Bypass, which is the only expressway in East Kowloon, are labelled by the company as "Kwun Tong Bypass Express"; and Route 798 series, which travels to and between Tseung Kwan O and Sha Tin via the Kwun Tong Bypass and the Tate's Cairn Tunnel, has been packaged as the "TKO - Sha Tin Express Links".

Tsing Sha Highway was also commissioned in 2008-2009 to provide a direct route from Sha Tin to West Kowloon, Tsing Yi and Lantau. However, due to the failure of the design of the Tsing Sha Highway's entrance/exit at the Cheung Sha Wan section and the impact of the recurrent congestion on the section of the Tolo Highway and Tai Po Road - Sha Tin, the effect of the express routes to West Kowloon or the Western Harbour Crossing (WHC) has been limited , and the the Lion Rock Tunnel is ineffective and has little attraction to franchised buses. At one time, Long Win Bus (LWB) routes operating the Airport and North Lantau routes preferred to continue to use the Shing Mun Tunnels and the Tsing Yi North Coastal Road rather than diverting to the entire Route 8. As a result, in the first five years of operation of Tsing Sha Highway, only a handful of franchised buses operated along the highway, and no full-time bus routes were stationed there. It was not until December 2012 that KMB's first full-day Tsing Sha Highway route 286X commenced operation, followed by a number of regional rationalisations from 2013 onwards, and improvement works carried out by the Highways Department on the Tai Po Road - Sha Tin in 2014, that express routes via the Eagle's Nest Tunnel and the Sha Tin Heights Tunnel began to appear one by one, and the non-cross harbour routes of the KMB routes are generally labelled as "Route 8 Express", and the Tsing Sha Highway Interchange, which had been left vacant for nearly seven years, was finally opened in early 2015.

In an interview with the British famous magazine Buses, KMB's former Director of Transport Development Mark Savelli said that the company hoped to develop the "KMB Express" brand for its long-haul routes in order to divert passengers from different sources. In recent years, KMB and TD have also proposed and implemented a number of express routes, such as the first-generation route 6X, 35X, 36X, 268X, 277E and X42C, in order to develop the express market. Among these routes, Routes 268X, 277E and X42C have succeeded in opening up a huge patronage and have been expanded from peak-hour service to whole-day service, however Route 6X ended in failure as it completely overlapped with the West Rail Line and was still slower than the railway, and its service was terminated after less than two years of operation.

Advantages

Express routes generally adopt "point-to-point" routing, travelling directly between the two places and passing through expressways and strategic routes for most of the way, which is more time-saving than routes where the journeys are scheduled to meet with the termini on both sides of the road, or "semi-express routes" that run along the inner streets but with limited stops, thus shortening the travelling time and providing a faster service to the passengers. Even though the fares of express routes may be slightly higher than those of their normal counterparts, many express routes are very popular among passengers and have even attracted a large number of rail passengers who need to make multiple interchanges to switch to "one trip direct" buses, making them an effective weapon for bus companies in their fight against competition from railways.

For the bus companies, apart from the fact that the express routes are more attractive to passengers and can open up more passenger sources, the shorter journey time enables the bus companies to use fewer vehicles to provide services, thus increasing the efficiency of fleet utilisation and giving them an edge under the fleet quota system. As for the original ordinary routes, due to passenger interchanges, more empty seats can be provided for buses to pick up passengers in the middle of the journey, thus alleviating the pressure of overcrowding at intermediate stops during peak hours.

Related articles

• Semi-express route
• Expressway
• Cityflyer
• New Territories Express Route