Why do UK bus operators not use basic measures used everywhere else to speed the service?

[RT4038]

But now there's no point in having stuff like this, because "tap in, tap out" contactless.

Agreed!

 

[miklcct]

This is what I am most dissatisfied about buses in UK (outside London) in general.

Tell me then. Why does only the UK and Ireland operate a predominance of single door urban buses?

It is simply British exceptionalism. And sadly in the case of public transport, that exceptionalism is usually us being worse than elsewhere.

So why don't London, Hong Kong and Singapore operate a predominance of single door urban buses? They were all part of British Empire and they have all adopted 2 doors in their main bus fleet!

The dwell time is longer. You'd be daft to think otherwise. Front doors, driver presses the button, door closes, brake releases, off you go. Rear doors, you have to check they are clear using cameras and the mirror, press the button, alarm starts, then doors close, brake release takes longer normally and then off you go.

You are daft to think in this way. With one door, you need to wait for 30 passengers getting off first, before boarding another 30 passengers. With 2 doors, boarding and alighting can be done at the same time.

It goes like this:
1. The first one-man buses were on rural and lightly trafficked suburban routes, where separate boarding and alighting was unnecessary, and peak time loadings meant that maximum capacity was important (rather than a dual door taking up seating space)
2. In some areas routes were operated with front entrance crew operated vehicles and passengers were used to boarding and alighting at the front.
3. Many urban operators purchased dual door vehicles to start mainstream one man operation
4. Roadside infrastructure was not altered to cater for dual door vehicles (or often indeed front entrance vehicles). This was usually just not thought of, or not financially possible. Many bus stops at the time would have had to cater for front, centre and rear door vehicles at the same time, taking up lots of kerb space and consequent reduction in parking spaces. In many places the bus operation was divorced, or certainly a silo department from, the highways authority.
5. Bus stop relocation or works is always a controversial subject - from the operators point of view often results in 'safety' audits resulting in a move to a less optimum location, and from the highway authority point of view is consultation and raises the ire of local residents/businesses, and costs money. Therefore to be avoided and 'let sleeping dogs lie' . These infrastructure works would require funding and a fairly long lead time, which was not available as OMO conversion was often a rushed job for various reasons.
6. Accidents involving passengers trapped by closing centre doors (esp. when passengers were standing between the cab and the centre doors), and/or alighting into unsuitable places (grass verges, drains, railings, shelters, parked vehicles), and incidents of passengers boarding through the centre doors with or without intent to avoid paying their fare meant that the driving staff did not like the centre doors, and operations management concurred with their view. (fewer insurance claims and bad publicity, more fares collected, and passengers kept coming to the front to alight anyway)
7. The UK and Ireland driving on the left meant that bespoke bodywork was being built, so no purchasing standard vehicles from Europe or America, so omitting the centre door probably made the vehicle cheaper rather than more expensive.

I can't comment on your points 1 to 6, but 7 is not true considering that the number of 2-door buses London, Singapore and Hong Kong buy, which mean mass production.

That's quite interesting - is it the large student/young people population we don't really have in Milton Keynes, perhaps? I'd say most here are either ENCTS, debit card or paper season ticket, but almost no cash as you say. Paying cash seems to be mostly a "Boomer" generational thing, and as those people drift into getting concessionary cards and free travel the need for acceptance gets tiny.

There are still so many youngsters here where I live paying cash on buses, and that's an annoyance. Furthermore, the only way to buy a weekly ticket on the smart card on a bus is BY CASH because of Ticketer limitation (not being able to charge a debit card and load a smart card at the same time)!

In a lot of places (outside the UK) you can easily buy a ticket from A to B on your phone as they have zonal fare systems. The traditional British stage based fares makes this a lot more complicated, and even more difficult when trying to buy a ticket from A to B when changing at C, whereas with a zonal fare system changing makes no difference. In Switzerland they have an app where you log in at the start of the journey and log out at the end. The optimal fare is worked out by checking your phone's location at regular intervals throughout your journey. It can work with changes of mode between train, bus, tram and boat and works nationwide.

However a good zonal system is hard to implement - the reason is how to set up the zones to avoid price anomalies near zone borders. Even London Buses have abolished the zonal system as well, leaving it only on the railway where there are still some controversial allocations (such as Croydon in zone 5).

[My bolding]. Yes, it seems to me that there are a number of problems with tap-on/tap-off:

What happens if you forget to tap off? Unlike with railway stations, most people are not used to the concept of having to 'check out' in any way from a bus, and while regular users will presumably soon get used to it, there's a risk of giving occasional users a bad experience that will deter them from becoming regulars -- you can imagine people saying things like 'I tried getting the bus into town once, but I found out afterwards that they'd charged me £10 for a 2-mile journey, so I always drive now'.

If you want to use capping or something to retain the benefits of return tickets, day tickets, etc., then even with a flat fare there will need to be a system behind the scenes to work it all out (unless such tickets continue to be sold by the driver).

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that ideally you should be told how much you're going to be paying before you commit to paying it, and if that's not practicable, you should certainly at least be told at some point. If I remember rightly, the system that my local operator used briefly (only for single tickets) a couple of years or so ago gave no indication of the fare at all -- the only way to find out was to ask the driver or check your bank account afterwards. For me this was just an annoyance, but there will be some bus passengers who have to watch every penny:

Depends really as many 'returns' are now replaces with day tickets so in many cases, it would still work for returns but you do make a good point. Some of the newer 10 trip tickets (or whatever number is used these days) are on apps only and so that helps things but I don't think it's worth it for operators to have every single ticket type online and I think part of that stems back to operators not publishing information on fares because it helps competition. Hopefully as fares start becoming simpler, this sort of thing will be made easier.

Not publishing fare information harms consumer right. Outside the UK, the only countries where I can't readily find fare information beforehand are developing countries like China or Russia, where stage-based fares are also used, but in China, more and more routes are moving to flat fares to save a conductor on busy buses, with reduced fares for most passengers. The fare reduction can be as much as 70% on a long route when the change is made.

I can tell you for 100% certain that even on some of the busiest urban routes, it would make no difference whatsoever because 98% of stops are pick up or drop off only, not both.

What makes you have such assertion? The only routes which exhibit such boarding patterns are express routes, or rural routes connecting one single town. Most intra-urban routes I have encoutered have passengers boarding and alighting all the way.

If you want to experience how things are, try sitting on the kerb-side seats right at the front of a bus, where you can see how (in)efficiently the driver manages with the flow of passengers/ requests/ journey types, you get a great flavour of how life is at the coal face

You'll see how some people don't feel confident getting their wallet/ bank card/ phone out until they've stepped onto the vehicle (and, fair enough, given how valuable a mobile phone is or how easily you could help yourself to hundreds of pounds of goods with a £100 contactless limit, a lot of people aren't confident to hold these things out on a busy pavement where you might have several strangers in a line behind you

Maybe you're a big bloke who never gets into any bother but put yourself in the position of a more vulnerable passenger, they'll not want to stand in that queue with their bank card/ purse/ mobile phone easily grabbable

I believe that the risk of leaving a bank card behind is much greater than having it stolen, and now as device pay becomes commonplace, security measures can be set up on phones such that the effect of losing one is minimal (password, device encryption, regular backup, cloud storage, etc). I have lost or broken so many phones in the past years, but I only use a combination of sub £300 phones as I recognise that phones are easily lost or broken and don't want to spend a lot of money on them.

Parking the debate about fare collection for one second, I note that the door issue comes up frequently.

A key reason why most non-London bus operators don't want to use a bus with a second door is the loss of the four seats. Your might think "well its only four seats" but that's a meaningful capacity on some sizes of vehicles. On the longer double deckers I agree that it really doesn't make that much difference. The Enviro400XLB is a good example of a bus with 100 seats and two doors. Indeed it's the sort of thing that could work really well on some routes in places like Leeds but they don't seem to be trying it on.

How much standing capacity (that's important) is lost by having a second door? Buses in Hong Kong are having some of the seats removed to increase standing capacity.

A real good point which I’ve tried to make before when people have been discussing the benefits of using contactless instead of Oyster when travelling around London. I’m in my mid 60’s but feel that I’m from a generation where a bank card was something that you took great care of and kept it securely tucked away in a safe place. Maybe it’s not just generational but also because I’ve mainly always lived in a village and large cities are places that I feel less safe walking the streets.

Whenever I go to London my bank card is kept in my wallet which is kept in a secure place, usually in a zipped up pocket in my jacket or a zipped up compartment in my bag. I find it quite amazing that people walk around with their bank cards in their hands touching in and out as they enter and leave busy tube stations. It’s something that I just wouldn’t feel safe doing and even try to keep my Oyster Card in a very secure place in-between using it. I therefore fully understand why some people may also feel hesitant using contactless cards and expensive phones when boarding buses. I’m pleased to say that when boarding the bus in the village where I live it doesn’t actually worry me getting out my phone.

Therefore people use multiple bank accounts and multiple bank cards, where only a small amount of money is put on the card which one flashes frequently.

I don't think double doors will make much of an impact on speeding up journeys, the number of seconds lost where passengers can't board because people are alighting, excluding at the terminus must amount to seconds. All it would take would be for an elderly person or a wheelchair user to board and take ages to get settled and any time saving would be lost. There are few stops where many people are boarding and alighting at the same time.

Imagine a bus loaded to full capacity, where half of the bus (50 passengers) alight at the town centre and replaced with another half bus load of new passengers. Even with two doors the dwell time can be minutes. Imagine what will happen if there is only 1 door.

It needs to be accepted that even outside of a regulated system the competitor is the car and taxi, and the omnipresence of those modes mean it is basically impossible to overcharge to excess for fares in a monopoly situation.

Private cars and taxis are not the main competitors to bus and metro. They are different classes of travel, like travelling on a commercial airliner vs travelling on a private jet. Taking cars and taxis represents a much higher expense than taking public transport. Trains and buses are competitors to each other if they run on a similar corridor, like the 100 AirLink v.s. Edinburgh Trams to the airport.

Travelling on buses in London is a painfully slow, jerky and tedious process, probably not to be sampled too much if you want an enjoyable trip.

For a much more enjoyable bus ride, go to continental Europe. Prague has the most efficient bus operation I have ever seen. Ticketing is done exclusively off-site (using ticket machines) and there are no designated doors for boarding and alighting, just like taking metro trains.

Yes, in my experience ('provincial' Southern England) there is significant work commuting, granted by non-suit-wearers but still commuters.

I do perfectly understand that a commercial bus company is not going to want to risk its profits by inserting additional vehicles to maintain the off-peak frequency in the peak. However it's really in that case up to the government to provide the funding.

One thing they could do in the evening peak is use school journey vehicles on outbound commuter routes. With the school peak around 1500-1630 but the work peak more like 1700-1830, this could work. Sadly in the morning, where people are more in a rush to get somewhere than in the evening, it doesn't work out as the school and work peaks are both in the same 0800-0900 hour.

A commercial bus company will want to capture profit by inserting additional vehicles which can attract 100 commuters on an express bus trip to town at a premium price, but which doesn't warrant off-peak operation. Such buses can be used on regular services off-peak with minimal marginal cost to increase frequency to further attract passengers.

on rural journeys especially we’ve some elderly isolated passengers, where the driver can be their only social contact for days at a time. Having a chat with that passenger is an essential part of the service.
Most of us will take no issue delaying a bus for a minute or two to welfare check up on this type of passenger (we know roughly who they are on rural runs)

We are talking about urban bus travel though. There aren't any problems with the current model on rural routes.

 

[GusB]

This is what I am most dissatisfied about buses in UK (outside London) in general.

So why don't London, Hong Kong and Singapore operate a predominance of single door urban buses? They were all part of British Empire and they have all adopted 2 doors in their main bus fleet!


You are daft to think in this way. With one door, you need to wait for 30 passengers getting off first, before boarding another 30 passengers. With 2 doors, boarding and alighting can be done at the same time.

I can't comment on your points 1 to 6, but 7 is not true considering that the number of 2-door buses London, Singapore and Hong Kong buy, which mean mass production.

There are still so many youngsters here where I live paying cash on buses, and that's an annoyance. Furthermore, the only way to buy a weekly ticket on the smart card on a bus is BY CASH because of Ticketer limitation (not being able to charge a debit card and load a smart card at the same time)!


However a good zonal system is hard to implement - the reason is how to set up the zones to avoid price anomalies near zone borders. Even London Buses have abolished the zonal system as well, leaving it only on the railway where there are still some controversial allocations (such as Croydon in zone 5).




Not publishing fare information harms consumer right. Outside the UK, the only countries where I can't readily find fare information beforehand are developing countries like China or Russia, where stage-based fares are also used, but in China, more and more routes are moving to flat fares to save a conductor on busy buses, with reduced fares for most passengers. The fare reduction can be as much as 70% on a long route when the change is made.

What makes you have such assertion? The only routes which exhibit such boarding patterns are express routes, or rural routes connecting one single town. Most intra-urban routes I have encoutered have passengers boarding and alighting all the way.


I believe that the risk of leaving a bank card behind is much greater than having it stolen, and now as device pay becomes commonplace, security measures can be set up on phones such that the effect of losing one is minimal (password, device encryption, regular backup, cloud storage, etc). I have lost or broken so many phones in the past years, but I only use a combination of sub £300 phones as I recognise that phones are easily lost or broken and don't want to spend a lot of money on them.

How much standing capacity (that's important) is lost by having a second door? Buses in Hong Kong are having some of the seats removed to increase standing capacity.

Therefore people use multiple bank accounts and multiple bank cards, where only a small amount of money is put on the card which one flashes frequently.


Imagine a bus loaded to full capacity, where half of the bus (50 passengers) alight at the town centre and replaced with another half bus load of new passengers. Even with two doors the dwell time can be minutes. Imagine what will happen if there is only 1 door.


Private cars and taxis are not the main competitors to bus and metro. They are different classes of travel, like travelling on a commercial airliner vs travelling on a private jet. Taking cars and taxis represents a much higher expense than taking public transport. Trains and buses are competitors to each other if they run on a similar corridor, like the 100 AirLink v.s. Edinburgh Trams to the airport.


For a much more enjoyable bus ride, go to continental Europe. Prague has the most efficient bus operation I have ever seen. Ticketing is done exclusively off-site (using ticket machines) and there are no designated doors for boarding and alighting, just like taking metro trains.


A commercial bus company will want to capture profit by inserting additional vehicles which can attract 100 commuters on an express bus trip to town at a premium price, but which doesn't warrant off-peak operation. Such buses can be used on regular services off-peak with minimal marginal cost to increase frequency to further attract passengers.

We are talking about urban bus travel though. There aren't any problems with the current model on rural routes.

The thread title says "UK bus operators" and doesn't specifically mention urban operations.

 

[Deerfold]

Other operators have had ITSO. It is flawed but some operators have made much more use of it than others. Of course, the government should have mandated widespread smartcard usage, with the associated regulation and funding if required. Letting operators do their own thing was always going to mean poor implementation. Ultimately, everything is the fault of (or thanks to) the government as they are the ones setting the rules.

Before Oyster, London used to sell books of bus tickets. Other operators could have implemented something similar if they had implemented flat fares. Given that many towns now have flat fares within urban areas, it sounds hard to believe that they couldn't have done that 20 years ago.

15 years ago I was using cards on my local buses that were clipped by the driver - they had 10 tickets on.
I only used them occasionally as they were only worth using if I was making a single journey.
Despite having 8 or 10 fares on my route they only produced 2 of these cards -one valid within the town boundary and one for any journey on any of their buses.

 

[philthetube]

For large numbers boarding and alighting at the same stop the time saved is only the amount of time it takes for the first 4/5 passengers to board, beyond that they have no where to go until all leavers have gone.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Private cars and taxis are not the main competitors to bus and metro. They are different classes of travel, like travelling on a commercial airliner vs travelling on a private jet. Taking cars and taxis represents a much higher expense than taking public transport.

This is totally and utterly false. It is an attitude prevalent in Asia (which might be why you take the view with your HK connection), but in Europe it is generally recognised that the desirable situation is that as many car or taxi journeys as possible are switched to public transport (or bicycle or foot) regardless of how posh/rich the passenger might be. And you can see that in London, where you get anyone and everyone on the Tube and bus.

 

[Starmill]

This is totally and utterly false. It is an attitude prevalent in Asia (which might be why you take the view with your HK connection), but in Europe it is generally recognised that the desirable situation is that as many car or taxi journeys as possible are switched to public transport (or bicycle or foot) regardless of how posh/rich the passenger might be. And you can see that in London, where you get anyone and everyone on the Tube and bus.

Indeed. And, if we turn this on its head, that our general indifference to quick, frequent local transport allowed Uber and other taxi services to poach lots of bus passengers with their low fares and super convenient app based service. We absolutely must reverse these losses.

 

[Deerfold]

One thing used to great effect on the mainland is that stops will be placed right next to traffic lights, and the bus driver pushes a button when ready to go, which causes the lights to immediately change in the bus's favour. Oxford St would be a good place to have this.

My point above was that in a traditional setup when the lights are green is totally random (as far as the bus is concerned), and thus how long it actually spends at the stop selling tickets doesn't have an effect on whether it's likely to get stuck at a red or not - it's random either way.

London buses have a system connected to the iBus system for changing lights at many junctions (it used to be a separate system). However, at many junctions there are buses approaching from several directions at once. The system used gives priority to buses which are running late, but of course that doesn't match up with his they are controlled - no one cares much if a bus is late if it's coming at the right frequency.

I did an analysis some years ago of time saved by this system and discovered that the more buses were advantaged by this system the more likely they were to be asked by controllers to wait at a future stop...

 

[Bletchleyite]

London buses have a system connected to the iBus system for changing lights at many junctions (it used to be a separate system). However, at many junctions there are buses approaching from several directions at once.

Yes, a key issue with bus priority in London is "but which bus gets priority?" as the network in Zone 1 is rather a conflicting web.

Most other towns and cities in the UK aren't like that - buses typically converge onto one or two trunk routes into the centre and either cross it on one or two routes or terminate. Thus, there are obvious lines of priority - but these systems are not usually in place despite the considerable benefits.

 

[miklcct]

This is totally and utterly false. It is an attitude prevalent in Asia (which might be why you take the view with your HK connection), but in Europe it is generally recognised that the desirable situation is that as many car or taxi journeys as possible are switched to public transport (or bicycle or foot) regardless of how posh/rich the passenger might be. And you can see that in London, where you get anyone and everyone on the Tube and bus.

It is always desirable for car or taxi passengers to switch to public transport, but in fact, the closest alternative to car ownership is a taxi. As long as not all public transport routes are direct / time competitive with the car / taxi, the rich will continue to drive their cars / take taxis. For example, if we map out all private vehicle journeys on a map within a certain hour, and find out that there are no common corridors where significant traffic passes through, it will not be possible for public transport to serve that area.

The case of London is that, because the road network is so bad, traffic is so slow, it's in the best interest even for millionaires to squeeze into a train to get to work, while in Hong Kong, trains and express bus routes actually provide journey times competitive to driving if we take the time to park a car into consideration, with the wealthy using buses, minibus if one is available, and taxis otherwise because parking itself is a hassle.

Indeed. And, if we turn this on its head, that our general indifference to quick, frequent local transport allowed Uber and other taxi services to poach lots of bus passengers with their low fares and super convenient app based service. We absolutely must reverse these losses.

Taxis and minicabs are always more expensive than the bus if they run on the same route, approximately at least 3x of the bus fare. Only if there is a group of passengers, taking a taxi or minicab together makes financial sense.

The reason why I am putting off taking buses mainly include:

• the bus doesn't go where I want
• the bus doesn't go on the most direct route
• the bus doesn't operate when I want (a poor connection can be categorised into this)

Yes, a key issue with bus priority in London is "but which bus gets priority?" as the network in Zone 1 is rather a conflicting web.

Most other towns and cities in the UK aren't like that - buses typically converge onto one or two trunk routes into the centre and either cross it on one or two routes or terminate. Thus, there are obvious lines of priority - but these systems are not usually in place despite the considerable benefits.

This is also a problem as well. If there isn't a good peripheral bus network, people are forced into private cars / taxis / minicabs whenever they want to take a journey where the direct route doesn't pass the town centre. As the town centre is the place with worst congestion, people will avoid them whenever they can, and the deficiency of such bus network will put them off.

 

[Starmill]

Taxis and minicabs are always more expensive than the bus if they run on the same route, approximately at least 3x of the bus fare.

Says who? That's not true. There are lots of places in England where, if you take a journey through suburbs of perhaps approximately four miles, a taxi will cost £4.50 and a bus £4.

 

[Kremlin Stooge]

With one door, you need to wait for 30 passengers getting off first, before boarding another 30 passengers. With 2 doors, boarding and alighting can be done at the same time.

Most intra-urban routes I have encoutered have passengers boarding and alighting all the way.

Imagine a bus loaded to full capacity, where half of the bus (50 passengers) alight at the town centre and replaced with another half bus load of new passengers. Even with two doors the dwell time can be minutes. Imagine what will happen if there is only 1 door.

Well, yes, in theory. In reality though, we need to bear in mind the ‘tidal-flow’ nature of many British bus routes.

Sorry folks, but I’m gonna harp on about Bristol again. The routes I drove (mainly to and from the eastern and north-eastern suburbs) had demand patterns heavily skewed towards the city centre. In the morning peak, for example, I’d accumulate passengers on the way into the city, with a mass exodus at 2 or 3 of the city centre stops. Very few got off en route, penny numbers really. I certainly never encountered a stop with 20 or 30 waiting to board whilst 20 or 30 got off.

Private cars and taxis are not the main competitors to bus and metro. They are different classes of travel, like travelling on a commercial airliner vs travelling on a private jet.

This has already been dealt with by others. I merely record my disagreement with the motion as proposed.

 

[Starmill]

It is always desirable for car or taxi passengers to switch to public transport, but in fact, the closest alternative to car ownership is a taxi.

Uh, the closest alternative is a car club, not a taxi. Taxis have a different role making them indespensible in certain unusual and specific cases e.g. those who need on demand transport but aren't permitted to drive for medical reasons or they're too young to take the test.

 

[Deerfold]

Says who? That's not true. There are lots of places in England where, if you take a journey through suburbs of perhaps approximately four miles, a taxi will cost £4.50 and a bus £4.

To get home from my local station a single is £2.40 (and a half mile walk to the bus station). A taxi from the station is £4.
If there's two of us, it takes less than half the time and is cheaper to go by taxi.
The economies are different for a return trip, of course

 

[miklcct]

Says who? That's not true. There are lots of places in England where, if you take a journey through suburbs of perhaps approximately four miles, a taxi will cost £4.50 and a bus £4.

£4.50 for four miles on a taxi?! Where I live it takes £11 for three miles where an express bus on the exact same route is £3.10!

The flag drop of a taxi is £4 already.

 

[RT4038]

£4.50 for four miles on a taxi?! Where I live it takes £11 for three miles where an express bus on the exact same route is £3.10!

The flag drop of a taxi is £4 already.

Sounds pretty cheap, but then maybe in certain parts of the country?

 

[Starmill]

Precisely. Lots of places have local taxis that offer low rates.

 

[WAB]

Yes and it’s the same in Leeds, but in reality there are probably only a small number of stops within the city centre where vast numbers are boarding and alighting, numbers so vast where a second door would have any benefit.

In Leeds, rear doors are actually seriously needed, as dwell times are insane due to the medieval fares system and the lack of rear doors.

 

[RT4038]

Precisely. Lots of places have local taxis that offer low rates.

Certainly not that cheap in my town!

 

[johncrossley]

There used to be some discussion years back when some bus companies were complaining that they couldn't compete against local taxi firms. Some towns had a well above average number of (private hire) taxis meaning huge competition in taxis depressed taxi fares. Corby may have been one of them.

 

[daodao]

In Greater Manchester, they have relatively few cross-city routes in Manchester.

That was not the case in Manchester 50 years ago, or 100 years ago with the 1st generation tramways, although there was a period while the tramways were being shut down that routes were split for a number of years. However, splitting the bus companies into North and South operations, subsequently to different private operators, together with closing of several city centre streets to through traffic, severed virtually all the previous cross-city links. A few new ones have now been created, mainly to facilitate easier journeys to the key traffic destination of the various higher education and health care facilities along Oxford Road.

 

[RT4038]

So why don't London, Hong Kong and Singapore operate a predominance of single door urban buses? They were all part of British Empire and they have all adopted 2 doors in their main bus fleet!

I am not sure what the British Empire has to do with it. It was long over before Singapore got dual door buses and Hong Kong were still operating single door buses.

I can't comment on your points 1 to 6, but 7 is not true considering that the number of 2-door buses London, Singapore and Hong Kong buy, which mean mass production.

I can assure you that, irrespective of the number of dual door buses being built for London, at the the time that the provincial UK industry was flirting with dual door vehicles, the price of a dual door bus was higher than that of single door. London would have paid a premium over a comparable order for single door vehicles. For many provincial operators this would have been another argument for the anti- dual door faction (see points 1-6)
When London prematurely disposed of its initial fleet of 2,646 dual door double deckers, most went to provincial operators with the centre doors removed and replaced with seating. By this time (early 80s) the dual door argument had already been, by and large, lost in the provinces.

You are daft to think in this way. With one door, you need to wait for 30 passengers getting off first, before boarding another 30 passengers. With 2 doors, boarding and alighting can be done at the same time.

Imagine a bus loaded to full capacity, where half of the bus (50 passengers) alight at the town centre and replaced with another half bus load of new passengers. Even with two doors the dwell time can be minutes. Imagine what will happen if there is only 1 door.

How often, and at how many places, does this happen in the provinces? Not many I shouldn't think. [jut imagining a bus loaded to full capacity in the provinces is only through the mists of time!] The question is - is it worth all the bus stop/station infrastructure expenditure and hassle, remembering that it is not so much the operator but the highway authority that has little direct gain for its trouble.

A commercial bus company will want to capture profit by inserting additional vehicles which can attract 100 commuters on an express bus trip to town at a premium price, but which doesn't warrant off-peak operation.

I cannot imagine many places in provincial UK where this might conceivably happen, and anyway such services would not require dual door buses - I would think the extra 6 seats would be of more use.

For a much more enjoyable bus ride, go to continental Europe. Prague has the most efficient bus operation I have ever seen. Ticketing is done exclusively off-site (using ticket machines) and there are no designated doors for boarding and alighting, just like taking metro trains.

Open boarding is highly unlikely to happen in the UK.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

@RT4038 is absolutely right. The argument for dual door vehicles in places outside London and Edinburgh was largely lost by the early 1970s. West Midlands was a early mover to single door vehicles from c.1970/1 and think Greater Manchester likewise from about 1973, though there were places that persisted despite being relatively small towns such as Ipswich or Hartlepool. A lot of the reasons may be lost in the mists of time and you have to look at how things were then. There was a clear aim to move to one person operated vehicles to reduce staff costs, not least in a period when passenger figures were already steeply declining and staff shortages were endemic. The 1960s had seen one-person-operated (OPO) vehicles and, initially in urban environments, these were often single deck, dual door vehicles such as Bristol RELLs, as well as less successful designs. Obviously, this did have benefits but in many instances, the reason behind it was an insistence (usually caused by trade unions) that double deckers would be either crew operated or that if they were to be OPO, then they would be single door.

The requirement for single door was also promoted because of driver shortages and the need for operational efficiencies so that capacities were increased (no loss of downstairs seats). Also, the additional cost of dual doors, both in purchase and ongoing, was a factor. Once that shift happened, it led to a fundamental casting of the dye so that it became the default way of doing it in the UK.

Similarly, the move to OPO and the demands of unions was reflected in how fares were handled. If drivers were now to replace conductors in fare taking, there was a view that they had enough on their plate. So as well as avoiding perceived safety issues with centre doors, there was also issue of fare handling etc. In some instances, that led to the use of fareboxes (that still persist in a number of areas), as well as other off-bus sales - monthly passes that could be bought at newsagents or travel shops, carnet strips etc.

However, the fact is that operators in the UK regulated and deregulated world have always had to cut their cloth (with perhaps a few instances in some PTEs in the 1970s/1980s) so they had to undertake the exercise of saying, if I do X, what is the cost and what is the benefit? And if it requires a significant investment, what is the payback period before I see that benefit. This is all standard stuff - it may explain why someone like Go Ahead with a predominantly urban bus portfolio outside London (Oxford, South Hampshire, Brighton and Hove, Tyne and Wear) could make the case for ITSO investment whereas Stagecoach couldn't - you'd have to ask them!

Until the entire bus system is changed - (I know franchising is often the term used but it's a misnomer) a move to 3rd party operation where operators are directly paid AND, most crucially, the financial and funding model is changed in both structure and in size, then you aren't going to have a European style operation etc. That's the truth of it. I might also add that there has to be a consequent change in how we view our relationship to the private car and to taxis/ubers.

 

[miklcct]

There used to be some discussion years back when some bus companies were complaining that they couldn't compete against local taxi firms. Some towns had a well above average number of (private hire) taxis meaning huge competition in taxis depressed taxi fares. Corby may have been one of them.

Buses can always offers much lower fares than taxis given enough loading (e.g. 50 passengers on average load).

I am not sure what the British Empire has to do with it. It was long over before Singapore got dual door buses and Hong Kong were still operating single door buses.

The British Empire ended in 1997 when Hong Kong was returned to China. Before that, Hong Kong even used 3-door buses (1 boarding and 2 alighting) as an attempt to further reduce dwell time compared to 2-door buses, but the effect was not good and it was not compatible with the layout of air-conditioned modern buses so 2-door buses remain mainstream. There were a batch of single-door double decker buses (Dennis Trident 12 m) bought after 1997 though, but they had a semi-deluxe design and were exclusively used on long-haul motorway routes.

How often, and at how many places, does this happen in the provinces? Not many I shouldn't think. [jut imagining a bus loaded to full capacity in the provinces is only through the mists of time!] The question is - is it worth all the bus stop/station infrastructure expenditure and hassle, remembering that it is not so much the operator but the highway authority that has little direct gain for its trouble.

If a bus network doesn't get full loading which is required to profit with £1 single-journey fare, making it cheaper than fuel cost of driving alone, it is a failure.

 

[Deerfold]

Buses can always offers much lower fares than taxis given enough loading (e.g. 50 passengers on average load).

That's a very high average load which you're unlikely to achieve outside very high density populations.

Many bus routes in the UK are run by vehicles which can't even legally carry 50 passengers.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Jan 2022 ==

If a bus network doesn't get full loading which is required to profit with £1 single-journey fare, making it cheaper than fuel cost of driving alone, it is a failure.

There's many places in the UK where that won't work.

What's your suggestion (designating them as a failure isn't a solution)?

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's a very high average load which you're unlikely to achieve outside very high density populations.

Many bus routes in the UK are run by vehicles which can't even legally carry 50 passengers.

It's also worth noting that while bus drivers are not well-paid compared with traincrew, they are typically on considerably more than minimum, whereas private hire "taxi" drivers are often on very low levels of income and work very long hours (hours that would be illegal in bus operation) to make ends meet. And as they are generally considered self-employed (with some recent complications), they have almost no protections.

 

[carlberry]

Buses can always offers much lower fares than taxis given enough loading (e.g. 50 passengers on average load).

If a bus network doesn't get full loading which is required to profit with £1 single-journey fare, making it cheaper than fuel cost of driving alone, it is a failure.

I cant think of anywhere in the UK that could expect 50 passengers as an average load (other than specific commuter/education flows). Even London would struggle on any service that runs contra flow in the peak and in the evenings. Some services would struggle to get 50 all day! As Deerfold has said the average seating capacity on the UK bus fleet is likely to be in the high 30s or low 40s because of the number of fairly small single deckers that are operated.
I dont know what you're saying with the £1 thing, is it that buses should only change £1 and, if they dont get enough passengers, then there is no bus service? That's even more extreme than anything Mr Ridley suggested all those years ago!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I cant think of anywhere in the UK that could expect 50 passengers as an average load (other than specific commuter/education flows). Even London would struggle on any service that runs contra flow in the peak and in the evenings. Some services would struggle to get 50 all day! As Deerfold has said the average seating capacity on the UK bus fleet is likely to be in the high 30s or low 40s because of the number of fairly small single deckers that are operated.
I dont know what you're saying with the £1 thing, is it that buses should only change £1 and, if they dont get enough passengers, then there is no bus service? That's even more extreme than anything Mr Ridley suggested all those years ago!

I know @miklcct either originates from Hong Kong or has extensive experience of living there, but I think it's fair to say that the realities of operating suburban bus services in the UK are totally different from those of operating them in massive, super-dense Asian megacities. Nowhere in the UK, not even London*, has the population density of those Asian cities which lead to their huge economies of scale in public transport.

* I recall Portsmouth, not London, actually has the highest population density in the UK, and that's mostly just a large area of Victoria terraced housing.

 

[miklcct]

There's many places in the UK where that won't work.

What's your suggestion (designating them as a failure isn't a solution)?

Then I'm sorry to say that, in those places, we can do nothing to reduce car ownership or car usage, because in such case, if the car is used frequent enough, it will be cheaper than the bus, leaving the few occasional users, who can't support a commercial bus service, using car clubs, taxis and minicabs as their main form of travel.

However, even a village of a thousand people only can support a 16-seat minibus route at a reasonable fare (a 16 seat minibus route charging £1-£2 can be profitable if it has nearly full loading from morning to night, uses cheap mass-production vehicles with cheap maintenance, simple roster and minimal operation overhead; while a loading of 50 people on a regular double decker route in the day allows the route to be sustainable in quieter periods and offers a true dawn-to-midnight service). The caveat here though is that there can only be a single road out of the village (e.g. due to geographical constraint) which will pass through the nearest town, aggregating enough trips to support a minibus service. If the village in question has 4 roads heading to 4 different directions with 4 different towns serving different needs, unless there is enough demand to support long-distance bus services between the towns passing through the village, the village can't be feasibly served by public transport.

My £1 argument really applies only if minicab services can be provided at the order of £4 for a 3-mile trip, where a bus won't be competitive if it charges £2 or more. As minicab fares are unregulated, minicab operation has a low barrier of entry, it is a representative of perfect competition and represents the true cost of offering personalised transport.

 

[Starmill]

Certainly not that cheap in my town!

They've certainly been going up faster than bus fares in the past year given the driver shortage and uber's grifting running out of fizz.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Jan 2022 ==

Then I'm sorry to say that, in those places, we can do nothing to reduce car ownership or car usage, because in such case, if the car is used frequent enough, it will be cheaper than the bus, leaving the few occasional users, who can't support a commercial bus service, using car clubs, taxis and minicabs as their main form of travel.

You're talking about large towns and small cities here. I'm afraid that you're really quite mistaken. We could just subsidise the buses and increase the taxes on car use.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Jan 2022 ==

I know @miklcct either originates from Hong Kong or has extensive experience of living there, but I think it's fair to say that the realities of operating suburban bus services in the UK are totally different from those of operating them in massive, super-dense Asian megacities.

Indeed.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Jan 2022 ==

I cant think of anywhere in the UK that could expect 50 passengers as an average load (other than specific commuter/education flows). Even London would struggle on any service that runs contra flow in the peak and in the evenings. Some services would struggle to get 50 all day! As Deerfold has said the average seating capacity on the UK bus fleet is likely to be in the high 30s or low 40s because of the number of fairly small single deckers that are operated.
I dont know what you're saying with the £1 thing, is it that buses should only change £1 and, if they dont get enough passengers, then there is no bus service? That's even more extreme than anything Mr Ridley suggested all those years ago!

Some of the routes in Edinburgh might come close, where they have the E400XLB with approximately 100 seats. But you're right it's not exactly going to be common.