What constitutes an appropriate vehicle for long distance bus services?

[BuhSnarf]

It was a a very nice trip. Had it been a coach, I'd have not had such a great view, perhaps not even gettin a window seat at all. Had it been a Citaro, I'd have had a sweaty bum from the leather seats, and been closer than I like to be to noisy teenagers and kids in prams on a long journey.

What was this mystical route?

 

[RJ]

It was a a very nice trip. Had it been a coach, I'd have not had such a great view, perhaps not even gettin a window seat at all. Had it been a Citaro, I'd have had a sweaty bum from the leather seats, and been closer than I like to be to noisy teenagers and kids in prams on a long journey.

Interesting comments about the seats. I’m almost never a passenger on buses these days but I have wondered how people get on with e-leather. As as operator I like them because they’re easy to clean, but I do wonder if they are as comfortable and have the same level of grip as a decent moquette seat. On trains moquette seems to be more popular. The old FGW HST First Class used some sort of leather and as lovely as the seat was, I wasn’t really keen on the lower level of grip and I’ve felt the same on National Express coaches. But the seats in airline First Class, Emirates, Qatar and Singapore for instance are also leather and I had no sliding issues whatsoever.

If I was to spec my own seats, I’m wondering if moquette would be the better option or if a specific grade of (e)leather would have to be chosen. Or even a mix of the two, with a moquette base and lumbar area with leather surrounds. I might not have to sit in them very often but I’d still want the best option for passenger comfort.

 

[BuhSnarf]

Interesting comments about the seats. I’m almost never a passenger on buses these days but I have wondered how people get on with e-leather. As as operator I like them because they’re easy to clean, but I do wonder if they are as comfortable and have the same level of grip as a decent moquette seat. On trains moquette seems to be more popular. The old FGW HST First Class used some sort of leather and as lovely as the seat was, I wasn’t really keen on the lower level of grip. But the seats in airline First Class, Emirates, Qatar and Singapore for instance are also leather and I had no issues whatsoever with sliding around in them.

If I was to spec my own seats, I’m wondering if moquette would be the better option or if a specific grade of (e)leather would have to be chosen. I might not have to sit in them very often but I’d still want the best option for passenger comfort.

(e-)Leather is fine if it has some padding underneath, for example the old 36 seats. But most e-Leather is on ironing board type foam which makes them really uncomfortable. But the biggest issue with non-fabric seats is that during the hot weather as buses do not have air con the seats are incredibly sweaty and sticky and the thought of how many people's sweat I'm sitting on is never a nice thought.

But yes, they do clean better.

 

[stevieinselby]

"Expecting them to do 70". I mean. It's the legal maximum speed limit for a bus according to the government. Why would they set the speed limit to 70 if the buses had to have limiters at 62. It makes no sense.

The legal speed limits are the same for buses and coaches up to 12m (which covers almost all normal non-bendy buses) as they are for minibuses.
The Europe-derived legislation that requires them to fit a limiter at 62mph (100km/h) only applies to a subset of that.

You will also find that buses (specifically buses, not coaches) are quite often limited lower than 62mph. and I know of some transport authorities who are managing the limiters are set at 50mph, but I have heard of operators such as Stagecoach setting the limiter at 45mph or lower, and then allocating those buses to routes which use the motorway and it's a joke.

Maybe you spend more time on city buses, I'm not sure, but as someone who has been on the bus more times than Id like to admit, watching HGVs overtake and you're left behind until you're just a spec in their mirror, it's a really bad advert for buses. It does nothing but reinforce the general publics view that buses are slow.

I've been on plenty of buses with different operators on dual-carriageways and motorways where they have kept up with or overtaken HGVs travelling at the predominant speed. I don't know who you've travelled with that is going so dramatically slower than HGVs that you perceive it to be such a problem, but if this was a major deterrent to the travelling public then it would be in those operators' commercial interests to run faster so that they were not losing too many passengers. The fact that they are happy running at those speeds suggests that it isn't a huge problem for most people, and so to call for majorly restrictive legislation because you get annoyed by them being a little bit slow is one of the most insane overreactions I've seen on this forum, and it's up against very strong competition.

 

[Teapot42]

I don't know who you've travelled with that is going so dramatically slower than HGVs that you perceive it to be such a problem,

When they were originally delivered, the E400EVs at Stonegravels were limited to 45. They ended up having to be withdrawn from the X17 as it was considered unsafe to run them up the M1 at such a low speed. I've read that HGV drivers felt they were being brake-checked as the brake lights came on with the limiter.

They've since been uprated to 52mph, still not great but at least fast enough to be considered safe to operate.

 

[RJ]

I’ve spent a lot of time on motorways moving buses between Sussex and Wales. It’s not a big deal if a bus can’t go at warp speed because there are usually at least two overtaking lanes for lorries and other vehicles to use. There's also a lot of car drivers who aren't confident doing more than 50mph. If a bus can't do at least 50mph however then it shouldn't really be allocated to motorway work. With engines packed tightly into compartments, cooling capacity is limited on many buses so doing 62 or 70mph as a matter of course isn't feasible. Lorries and coaches have a lot more room to facilitate airflow and bigger cooling equipment.

My Citaros all do 59mph, which is what Mercedes set the legal limit to. The only exception was a bendy bus which could be set to anything up to 87mph, but I set the limiter to 60mph to keep it legal. Citaros of all kinds are exceptionally study vehicles which hold the road well and ride smoothly at speed. They also have enormous radiators and either a pair of huge hydraulic fans or eight powerful electric fans. They can sit at 59mph for 180 miles without so much as breaking a sweat.

Not all low floor buses are capable of that. My 2005 Volvo B7RLEs were fine at 62mph as was a 2007 Optare Tempo. Dennis Darts should not exceed 43mph under any circumstance. Double deckers also have to be watched. Volvo B7TLs and B9TLs don't like exceeding 50mph for more than short bursts and doing high speed work with those with electric fan retrofits is not advisable. By 53-56mph, the stability of the oil temperatures takes a tumble and the lot will get hotter and hotter until you slow down. E400Hs I understand consume more energy than the generator produces if they go too fast, resulting in them losing power then grinding to a halt. You then have to idle for a few minutes to get them moving again. This is why they're limited to around 45mph. I've no data on how electric buses cope with motorway work.

Despite being told by many people to buy E200s and E400s due to lower operating costs and simpler maintenance, I understand the nature of the work I do and I choose the vehicles accordingly. I target buses with a 6 speed gearbox for purchase, along with heavyweight single deckers for this reason. The way I see it, it's not cheaper to subject buses to heavy going work that exceeds their design when you have breakdowns which not only cost money to deal with, but result in lost revenue and a hit to reputation. Citaros may not be the cheapest buses to run, but I can't fault them for reliability and versatility.

 

[AilsaBus]

I’ve spent a lot of time on motorways moving buses between Sussex and Wales. It’s not a big deal if a bus can’t go at warp speed because there are usually at least two overtaking lanes for lorries and other vehicles to use. There's also a lot of car drivers who aren't confident doing more than 50mph. If a bus can't do at least 50mph however then it shouldn't really be allocated to motorway work. With engines packed tightly into compartments, cooling capacity is limited on many buses so doing 62 or 70mph as a matter of course isn't feasible. Lorries and coaches have a lot more room to facilitate airflow and bigger cooling equipment.

My Citaros all do 59mph, which is what Mercedes set the legal limit to. The only exception was a bendy bus which could be set to anything up to 87mph, but I set the limiter to 60mph to keep it legal. Citaros of all kinds are exceptionally study vehicles which hold the road well and ride smoothly at speed. They also have enormous radiators and either a pair of huge hydraulic fans or eight powerful electric fans. They can sit at 59mph for 180 miles without so much as breaking a sweat.

Not all low floor buses are capable of that. My 2005 Volvo B7RLEs were fine at 62mph as was a 2007 Optare Tempo. Dennis Darts should not exceed 43mph under any circumstance. Double deckers also have to be watched. Volvo B7TLs and B9TLs don't like exceeding 50mph for more than short bursts and doing high speed work with those with electric fan retrofits is not advisable. By 53-56mph, the stability of the oil temperatures takes a tumble and the lot will get hotter and hotter until you slow down. E400Hs I understand consume more energy than the generator produces if they go too fast, resulting in them losing power then grinding to a halt. You then have to idle for a few minutes to get them moving again. This is why they're limited to around 45mph. I've no data on how electric buses cope with motorway work.

Despite being told by many people to buy E200s and E400s due to lower operating costs and simpler maintenance, I understand the nature of the work I do and I choose the vehicles accordingly. I target buses with a 6 speed gearbox for purchase, along with heavyweight single deckers for this reason. The way I see it, it's not cheaper to subject buses to heavy going work that exceeds their design when you have breakdowns which not only cost money to deal with, but result in lost revenue and a hit to reputation. Citaros may not be the cheapest buses to run, but I can't fault them for reliability and versatility.

I've travelled on several of First Glasgow's BYD double deckers on express services and have always thought it was unsafe for a vehicle to be plodding along at 30-40mph on a busy motorway. They should be limited to city work and nothing else.

 

[NCT]

I've not been on that one but I have been on the same company's 36 which has a similar interior. The seats are certainly nice, but it's still a noisy, lurching bus journey using vehicles unsuitable for higher speed running on the rural sections. In the end a bus is a bus, and you can only polish a turd so much. A coach has air conditioning and air suspension, and so is a much higher quality experience for longer and faster journeys.

A bus has air suspension too. And air conditioning is a matter of operator specification, not a bus vs coach differentiator.

 

[Magrar]

Pro tip.

Before getting angry at someone pootling along at a mere 50mph on a motorway, first check that the speed limit on that stretch isn't actually 50mph.

In my area the police enforce this with mobile camera vans. Even if it causes traffic congestion that holds up ambulances, at a time of day you'd be lucky even do 50, they're there.

So on goes the cruise control, and sod anyone trying to milk every last drop out of a vehicle on a 56mph limiter (including gravity assist!).

 

[AY1975]

That exists. One was trialled on the Trawscymru T10, basically a coach with a low floor section at the front. There are a few such vehicles, one type only has a few seats downstairs (Interdeck?), the one that was trialled on the T10 was about half low floor half high.. The latter seems quite suitable for these routes though I'd expect the cost was prohibitive?

Apart from that, are there any low-floor single decker bus type vehicles with coach type seats? Apologies if any have been mentioned upthread, but I'm not aware of any.

I suppose there's no reason why such a vehicle couldn't be built, although as others in this thread have said, the issue would be that each seat would take up more space than an ordinary bus seat so it would have to be at the expense of either seating capacity or legroom (or both).

Obviously there are examples of low-floor double deckers with coach type seats designed for longer distance bus services, such as those used on the Stagecoach X17 Barnsley-Sheffield-Chesterfield-Matlock-Wirksworth service mentioned upthread. I suppose you could class them as dual purpose vehicles of sorts, in that they are suitable for both longer distance and ordinary local bus services (and do occasionally turn up on the latter), but they're not really suitable for a coach service that runs on the motorway for at least part of the journey whereas coach type vehicles built in the 1970s and 80s that were also sometimes used on local bus services were dual purpose in the true sense of the term.

 

[Teapot42]

Obviously there are examples of low-floor double deckers with coach type seats designed for longer distance bus services, such as those used on the Stagecoach X17 Barnsley-Sheffield-Chesterfield-Matlock-Wirksworth service mentioned upthread.

Just to clarify, those *previously* used on the X17. Nowadays the X17 doesn't have dedicated vehicles, being operated using the E400EVs at Stonegravels with standard bus seats.

 

[BuhSnarf]

Just to clarify, those *previously* used on the X17. Nowadays the X17 doesn't have dedicated vehicles, being operated using the E400EVs at Stonegravels with standard bus seats.

Which is such a shame as the seats on the old X17 were amazing.

 

[9143180]

Apart from that, are there any low-floor single decker bus type vehicles with coach type seats? Apologies if any have been mentioned upthread, but I'm not aware of any.

It depends on how liberal you are with ‘coach type’ seats but Traws Cymru operators are rolling these out on the new EvoRa’s. (I think the T1 Yutongs also have the same)

I can’t find a link to the original post, I’m fairly sure it was posted on Facebook by one of the operators

 

[liamf656]

I think it's been mentioned in here but I find it a shame the Plaxton Panther LE didn't really take off. On a Volvo B8RLE chassis it combines accessibility with comfort by providing a low entry section easy for wheelchair users and prams, while maintaining the coach feel with comfy seats. The rear half of the saloon is also raised

Sunsundegui also had a competing model, the SB3, on the same chassis with similar features, and I think it even has luggage racks

 

[Tetchytyke]

Apart from that, are there any low-floor single decker bus type vehicles with coach type seats? Apologies if any have been mentioned upthread, but I'm not aware of any.

Stagecoach still have their E300s which were kitted out to Gold spec, there are quite a few still around in Lancashire. Same seats as on the Gold spec E400s.