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Also, for whatever historical customary expectations, British passengers expect a seat and so utilising the large standing allowances of heavy weight chassis is less popular than in Europe where there appears a greater acceptance of such so again the extra strength and weight offered by European heavyweight models.
Might also be a reflection that in Western Europe, buses perform much more of a feeder element into light or heavy rail. In the UK, journey durations are longer, and people are less inclined to stand!
Europe is better funded through state subsidies than the UK so running costs, particularly fuel, are more important to UK operators than Europeans and as such lighter weight options have been better supported.
Ain't that the truth. In Europe, operations may be contracted out and have a specifications that are applied (or even the vehicles are sourced by the procuring authority) so the cost of that is simply baked in and it's funded accordingly. In the UK, the fuel risk falls onto the operator so when you have fuel price volatility, not surprising that lightweight, fuel efficient vehicles are preferred.
There's the old line that accountants know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That is a little trite, but it is true that fuel cost is a known and quantifiable cost; the "value" of a smoother ride and how sensitive it is in patronage/revenue is a lot less clear.
Ain't that the truth. In Europe, operations may be contracted out and have a specifications that are applied (or even the vehicles are sourced by the procuring authority) so the cost of that is simply baked in and it's funded accordingly.
I think it depends where in Europe you are as to what type of bus you get and how good it is. Just as in the UK, European countries prioritise domestic manufacturers.
In Germany, MAN and Mercedes-Benz are everywhere. The Citaro isn't as good as it once was, but it is still a good bus. The MAN Lion's City feels more plasticky but some of that will be specification, the ones I've ridden in Germany were much better than the ones I've ridden in Ibiza.
I was in Strasbourg back in the early summer and their buses mostly seemed to be various Iveco models. They were all crap. Nobody who's been on an Iveco Urbanway can ever complain about the build or ride quality of an E200MMC.
There are many significant places along the route. Piccadilly, Oxford Road station, university, Rusholme (including "Curry Mile"), Owens Park, Fallowfield centre, Withington centre, Christie Hospital, West or East Didsbury. On this basis, multiple door is more justified for this route than about 90% of London routes!
But that wasn't the main point of the post. Given the huge flows between university and accommodation, that alone would justify a bendy bus, like in the Dutch example I quoted.
There is, absolutely loads. There are multiple flows, not just those ones (though those are the biggest). Don't forget all the routes continue south, too, they don't just terminate at Fallowfield.
It's very similar to Hamburg's former route 102 (one of the Metrobus routes now, I forget the number) which basically ran suburb-student accommodation-uni-city, though without the attraction of what should now probably be called the "kebab mile". The former 102 is operated now using three-door bendies, and has other ex-tramway features like the bus lanes being in the middle of the road (reached via crossings at junctions) which has the major advantage of avoiding cars turning across the buses, allowing continuous bus lanes across junctions and avoiding buses bumping down grids and damaging them, as well as clouting trees. It really does work very well and you could pretty much copy it identically down Oxford Road. There would perhaps be issues with people running across to buses, but if a 20 limit was applied this would mitigate most of those issues.
I wonder, as an aside, if it all runs more smoothly there now it's all Bee Network? One of the problems (that eventually resulted in that long almost-railway-station-like bus stop at Owens Park) of the past was that not only would you have *a* bus sat there loading for ten minutes (something that wouldn't happen with a bendy with multiple doors and only TOTO/off bus ticketing), you'd have three or four as different people had different passes, a Bullock's, a Finglands, a Magic Bus and a "proper" Stagecoach, plus UK North before they got the boot for that incident where a worker was killed when one of their buses hit a cherry picker or similar (after many other issues over the years).
There is, absolutely loads. There are multiple flows, not just those ones (though those are the biggest). Don't forget all the routes continue south, too, they don't just terminate at Fallowfield.
There are other flows, but during my period driving I didn't really find there were large enough conflicts of boarding and alighting passengers to make having a dual-door bus a benefit, as I mentioned at #243. Certainly they were not as heavy as some intermediate stops in the Calder Valley like Hebden Briddge, where you might swap a total of maybe 40 or 50 passengers at one stop. With buses running every minute or two on Wilmslow Road, it would be rare to find many passengers waiting at any one stop apart from the university traffic, unless perhaos an organised group of some part.
I wonder, as an aside, if it all runs more smoothly there now it's all Bee Network? One of the problems (that eventually resulted in that long almost-railway-station-like bus stop at Owens Park) of the past was that not only would you have *a* bus sat there loading for ten minutes (something that wouldn't happen with a bendy with multiple doors and only TOTO/off bus ticketing), you'd have three or four as different people had different passes, a Bullock's, a Finglands, a Magic Bus and a "proper" Stagecoach, plus UK North before they got the boot for that incident where a worker was killed when one of their buses hit a cherry picker or similar (after many other issues over the years).
Yes, Owens Park at the time was a farce, but it wasn't that it actually took ten minutes to load, in the sense of clearing a queue. Buses were fed into the stop after waiting at Fallowfield, with the intention by each company of having their bus on the stand and not leave until it was full, or very nearly so. Even if they had used 5-door artics, I'm sure they would still have held them there until full of their ticket-holders (bought off-bus somehow?), so I hope this at least has been rectified under Bee Network. Under pre-deregulation Greater Manchester Transport, there were only a few late-peak duplicates started at Owens Park, although student numbers were lower then, I assume.
Apologies for removing your comments about Hamburg, which I can't comment on. However, one comment I would quickly make about operations in Prague is that for all the time saved by the 'European' operating methods discussed on this thread - which is good for passengers if a quick journey is the aim - their more generous layover times at many termini negates some of the efficiency we might expect. I suspect the trolleybuses on the 59 to Prague airport spend almost as much time laying over at each end as they do running between them!
There is, absolutely loads. There are multiple flows, not just those ones (though those are the biggest). Don't forget all the routes continue south, too, they don't just terminate at Fallowfield.
Glider is a "fake tram" but it is essentially just a bendy-bus with the off-bus ticketing @johncrossley wants. The actual infrastructure is nothing special- segregated bus lanes in certain parts of Belfast, slightly raised bus stop kerbs, and ticket machines at stops. It still cost £100m, including the vehicles.
You could probably just about adapt a stop in Piccadilly Gardens for bendybuses, but it would still be very tight at the turning circle and any sort of delay and you'd clog the place up.
It's very similar to Hamburg's former route 102 (one of the Metrobus routes now, I forget the number) which basically ran suburb-student accommodation-uni-city, though without the attraction of what should now probably be called the "kebab mile".
I think you're referring to what is now Metrobus 5, which goes out to Burgwedel station.
That did have 3-part Van Hool bendies but last time I was in Hamburg it was down to 2-part bendies, although the Citaros bendies had a insane number of doors- I think it was five sets of doors.
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Yes, Owens Park at the time was a farce, but it wasn't that it actually took ten minutes to load, in the sense of clearing a queue. Buses were fed into the stop after waiting at Fallowfield, with the intention by each company of having their bus on the stand and not leave until it was full
As you say, Owens Park was a mess because of the competition, especially between Stagecoach and UK North. Both companies wanted to make sure they always had one of their buses on the stand and so everything would get clogged up as they waited until they were full. An absolute mess but nothing to do with the types of bus they used.
Glider is a "fake tram" but it is essentially just a bendy-bus with the off-bus ticketing @johncrossley wants. The actual infrastructure is nothing special- segregated bus lanes in certain parts of Belfast, slightly raised bus stop kerbs, and ticket machines at stops. It still cost £100m, including the vehicles.
You are right to mention it is simply a bendy-bus with a posh frock, as well as the off-bus ticketing as our Swiss devotee mentioned. That said, you also mentioned the bus lanes that Glider and other initiatives have brought . Having gained bus priority, not only does it then make those Gliders function better, it has potentially led to Translink ordering dual door deckers for Belfast (but not for the rest of NI).
Rather like Brighton, once you actually have decent bus priority, then it makes dwell time the key issue. Here's a little comparison
Falls Road, Belfast
Dewsbury Road, Leeds
Literally, it is about priorities! Otherwise, what's point of saving 30-45 seconds when you're losing 5 mins.
As you say, Owens Park was a mess because of the competition, especially between Stagecoach and UK North. Both companies wanted to make sure they always had one of their buses on the stand and so everything would get clogged up as they waited until they were full. An absolute mess but nothing to do with the types of bus they used.
I was hoping someone was going to mention this. It was always an unhappy consequence of competition (or fear of it) and getting vehicles to wait time there to hoover up passengers.
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Whilst looking at something on West Yorkshire's franchising proposals, I did spot this, and it really does encapsulate things about why dual doors aren't so commonly used and the issues of current infrastructure....
Double doors can shorten dwell-times at bus stops and can improve punctuality on busy routes and are used on most routes in London. However, London public transport has many characteristics that are different to the rest of the country. Due to the multicentric nature of London more passengers board and alight along a route than services which collect passengers and ultimately deliver them to a single location like a bus station or city centre. In West Yorkshire, more journeys are of that nature where they start or end at bus stations which are not configured to allow for double door operation, so a lot of the benefits seen in London would not be available.
Furthermore, bus stops in West Yorkshire are generally oriented with the screen at the road side, meaning a middle door would open into a screen. In many cases bus stops are oriented this way due to footpath width prohibiting them from being flipped. The alternative would be to extend bus stops so that buses stop before that shelter, rather than alongside the shelter, this would mean significant works to kerbs at bus station locations, which would be expensive and, in many cases, prohibited by spatial constraints.
You are right to mention it is simply a bendy-bus with a posh frock, as well as the off-bus ticketing as our Swiss devotee mentioned. That said, you also mentioned the bus lanes that Glider and other initiatives have brought . Having gained bus priority, not only does it then make those Gliders function better, it has potentially led to Translink ordering dual door deckers for Belfast (but not for the rest of NI).
Rather like Brighton, once you actually have decent bus priority, then it makes dwell time the key issue. Here's a little comparison
This is one where I'd look at mainland Europe again. Bus lanes in the UK have a bad habit of petering out a few hundred metres before junctions. Yet in the Germanic countries they pretty much always go right up to them and indeed have priority at them (and often the stop there too, so the driver can request priority when they are ready to go). Traffic light overtakes do exist in the UK but they are very few in number. They probably need to become the main form of bus infrastructure, so effective they can be, though we could also do with a change in the law to permit the use of tram signals for buses so you don't need an island, as that makes them a lot easier to fit in.
Apologies for removing your comments about Hamburg, which I can't comment on. However, one comment I would quickly make about operations in Prague is that for all the time saved by the 'European' operating methods discussed on this thread - which is good for passengers if a quick journey is the aim - their more generous layover times at many termini negates some of the efficiency we might expect. I suspect the trolleybuses on the 59 to Prague airport spend almost as much time laying over at each end as they do running between them!
Oh, very much so, I consider it a win-win for passengers and crews alike.
I was merely cautioning that it would be unlikely to happen that way in Britain, outside London and, if still the case, Liverpool, where excessive layovers were built into the cycle rather than having actual mealbreaks.
This is one where I'd look at mainland Europe again. Bus lanes in the UK have a bad habit of petering out a few hundred metres before junctions. Yet in the Germanic countries they pretty much always go right up to them and indeed have priority at them (and often the stop there too, so the driver can request priority when they are ready to go).
Traffic light overtakes do exist in the UK but they are very few in number. They probably need to become the main form of bus infrastructure, so effective they can be, though we could also do with a change in the law to permit the use of tram signals for buses so you don't need an island, as that makes them a lot easier to fit in.
You are right to mention it is simply a bendy-bus with a posh frock, as well as the off-bus ticketing as our Swiss devotee mentioned. That said, you also mentioned the bus lanes that Glider and other initiatives have brought . Having gained bus priority, not only does it then make those Gliders function better, it has potentially led to Translink ordering dual door deckers for Belfast (but not for the rest of NI).
Rather like Brighton, once you actually have decent bus priority, then it makes dwell time the key issue.
I'm not disparaging Glider, I really enjoyed using it when I was over in Belfast recently. They are nice pieces of kit.
The bus priority was middling at best though. My experience was that the Glider buses still sat in the same traffic in the city centre as everything else, especially at the west end of Donegall Square.
This is where European bus priority schemes are generally better. But in many European cities they have more room to play with than in the UK just because of the way urban development has gone. There's room to build proper bus segregation on big wide roads. This is one of the worst pinchpoints in Rusholme, where are you building a bus bypass here?
Whilst looking at something on West Yorkshire's franchising proposals, I did spot this, and it really does encapsulate things about why dual doors aren't so commonly used and the issues of current infrastructure
That issue with bus shelters isn't something I'd considered and, whilst I think they're over-egging it a bit, there is a valid point. West Yorkshire has quite a lot of 'staggered' bus shelters, for want of a better description, where you enter the shelter at one corner and leave at the diametrically opposite corner.
UK bus infrastructure has developed around the buses actually being used in the UK. Bus stations have moved to drive-in-reverse-out sawtooths, Kassel kerbs are designed around having the front door aligning with the raised bit, even bus shelters are designed around one door operation. IT will take a lot of time and money to unwind thirty years of infrastructure going in that direction.
Rusholme is probably the most difficult part of that route. A complete ban on private vehicles (bar cycles) with camera enforcement is probably the best that can be done - you would still need some delivery access to properties with no rear access but it would help a lot. There are other ways to get to most things around there.
The other option would be to completely redevelop the Rusholme corridor to create the space for a bus only road with segregated pedestrian and cycle space on both sides. It's generally made up of very poor quality properties of mixed vintage (to the point that flats above the shops are close to being slums, with many empty), which would probably not be too expensive to compulsorily purchase. Losing the "kebab mile" wouldn't be as much of a loss as when it was the "curry mile", and these businesses could perhaps be offered preferential lease rates in new build replacements with at least three storeys of flats above them all.
Poor ride quality might also be a function of poor road quality!
I don't know what the situation is like in other parts of Europe these days, but my experience of driving in France and Spain in recent years is that their roads are generally maintained to a much better standard than ours. If you've got nice smooth tarmac then the quality of your bus suspension is not going to be tested to the same degree.
Recently I have travelled the Shields Ferry replacement bus and the Oxford Whitney X52. Both routes were decker operated and had plenty of National Speed Limit running. At no point did I think ride quality an issue.
On interurban routes where capacity commands deckers, the choices really are:
- sit on a decker
- stand on a singer decker
- be denied boarding onto a coach
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Rusholme is probably the most difficult part of that route. A complete ban on private vehicles (bar cycles) with camera enforcement is probably the best that can be done - you would still need some delivery access to properties with no rear access but it would help a lot. There are other ways to get to most things around there.
The other option would be to completely redevelop the Rusholme corridor to create the space for a bus only road with segregated pedestrian and cycle space on both sides. It's generally made up of very poor quality properties of mixed vintage (to the point that flats above the shops are close to being slums, with many empty), which would probably not be too expensive to compulsorily purchase. Losing the "kebab mile" wouldn't be as much of a loss as when it was the "curry mile", and these businesses could perhaps be offered preferential lease rates in new build replacements with at least three storeys of flats above them all.
We don’t have Haussmann roads. We have traffic light cycles that barely let a rigid vehicle through. We don’t do compulsory purchase for anything short of a tram.
We tried bendies and it was a failed experiment. There would be a queue of 7 bendy buses at Cambridge Circus southbound and only one would get through each green light. Routes weren’t called the seventy free and the four-five-free for nothing. This is the reality of bendy bus operation in the UK.
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I’ve had a couple of rides on the 26/27 today in Bremen, operated with Citaro G buses. Here’s what I noticed.
With modern low-floor designs a large proportion of seats are on wheel arches and backward facing. People tend to start standing before these seats are filled. The doorways quickly get crowded by standees. Internal circulation on an 18-m artic degrades at a lower level of loading than on a typical UK single door decker. People getting off and on shimmying past the standees took some time. On a UK provincial decker the top-of-the-stairs to the front door is almost always plain sailing even with a ‘thank you’.
In terms of trunk section route length and service frequency, Bremen’s 26/27 are not dissimilar to Nottingham’s 43. I honestly don’t consider Nottingham’s 43 a slower or inferior experience.
With modern low-floor designs a large proportion of seats are on wheel arches and backward facing. People tend to start standing before these seats are filled. The doorways quickly get crowded by standees. Internal circulation on an 18-m artic degrades at a lower level of loading than on a typical UK single door decker. People getting off and on shimmying past the standees took some time. On a UK provincial decker the top-of-the-stairs to the front door is almost always plain sailing even with a ‘thank you’.
I’ve travelled on various buses in the UK and abroad, and I’d rather be on a packed bendybus than a packed double decker.
The loading and unloading times are substantially quicker.
A double decker, when there are lower deck standees blocking the corridor and the bottom of the staircase, it can be a ridiculously slow experience. While the people coming off the bus are going down the stairs, new passengers are waiting near the driver to be able to get on. And that’s on the double-doored London buses. It’s even slower on the provincial spec examples
I’ve travelled on various buses in the UK and abroad, and I’d rather be on a packed bendybus than a packed double decker.
The loading and unloading times are substantially quicker.
A double decker, when there are lower deck standees blocking the corridor and the bottom of the staircase, it can be a ridiculously slow experience. While the people coming off the bus are going down the stairs, new passengers are waiting near the driver to be able to get on. And that’s on the double-doored London buses. It’s even slower on the provincial spec examples
A 3-door artic starts being packed at around 50 passengers - wheel arch seats unfilled and people start standing by the doors. They don’t move down the bus between the wheel arches. 50 passengers are comfortably seated on a provincial decker. A degraded circulation 3-door dwell isn’t shorter than a free-flowing 1-door dwell. Then on British roads there’s the dimension of ease of pulling into bus stops with all doors at the kerb. My 26 in Bremen today actually didn’t fare well in that regard.
It should be remembered that a new artic would (or at least should) be electric. So the artic experience is now on a par with being on a trolleybus which makes a big difference. BRT systems using electric artics, especially three part artics, aren't too far off offering a tram like experience.
Is there really that much to complain about when travelling on modern trolleybuses, such as those in Bern and Salzburg? Would they really be better off with double deckers (assuming their bridges are compatible)?
Is there really that much to complain about when travelling on modern trolleybuses, such as those in Bern and Salzburg? Would they really be better off with double deckers (assuming their bridges are compatible)?
And I think this is the issue, nearly all passengers that actually use the bus will prefer a seat and most don't care about dwell times or the quality of the road surface, they put their headphones on and read a book (or scroll on their phone (!))
If you tell them that they can board and alight 10 seconds quicker but they have to stand I don't think you're going to convince many non-enthusiasts.
I’ve been on the trams in Bremen all day, and yes. Wheel arch blockage is a big problem. There’s never enough legroom in the bay of 4 over a bogie.
A tram makes sense when you can implement all the light rail characteristics.
Nottingham’s experience is that an Incentro/Citadis starts to feel cramped when it’s not carrying necessarily more people than a Scania on the 36 while still feeling comfortable. However, the NET has sufficient ‘light rail’ and routing USPs to still be a successful mode.
Is there really that much to complain about when travelling on modern trolleybuses, such as those in Bern and Salzburg? Would they really be better off with double deckers (assuming their bridges are compatible)?
The point being that the seating capacity of such vehicles is much lower than with a double-decker. Whether the propulsion is diesel, electric or the proverbial bionic stuff, single-decker buses with standee layouts offer far fewer seats. I don't mind standing if it's only a 10-minute hop, but any longer than that and I'd prefer to sit, and I'm fairly certain that I'm not the only one.
I’m only on my phone, and I don’t want to do cross tab comparisons without a desktop Excel. Those with time and resource on their hands are welcome to compare speeds between Nottingham’s 43 between King/Queen Street (I forget which) and Bremen’s 26/27 between Hauptbahnhof and Huckelriede.
The point being that the seating capacity of such vehicles is much lower than with a double-decker. Whether the propulsion is diesel, electric or the proverbial bionic stuff, single-decker buses with standee layouts offer far fewer seats. I don't mind standing if it's only a 10-minute hop, but any longer than that and I'd prefer to sit, and I'm fairly certain that I'm not the only one.
A point that I've made before. In many European cities, bus services act as feeders into light or heavy rail = shorter duration journeys and less issue in standees.
Not so in the UK. Now we can debate all the whys and wherefores about why we don't have extensive tram systems in the UK but that's for a different thread. The fact is that comparing buses and trams is like comparing apples and apricots.
A point that I've made before. In many European cities, bus services act as feeders into light or heavy rail = shorter duration journeys and less issue in standees.
Not so in the UK. Now we can debate all the whys and wherefores about why we don't have extensive tram systems in the UK but that's for a different thread. The fact is that comparing buses and trams is like comparing apples and apricots.
A city of ~500k inhabitants would be a tram city in France or (former Eastern) Germany, but a cycling city with a skeletal bus network in the Netherlands. This shows there’s no single valid approach and British bus cities are just as valid as an approach. Single door buses work well in the British context.
Depends what you mean by trams. A traditional tramway like Blackpool or Den Haag is comparable to buses - it does what buses do - lots of stops, slow on street running etc (but a degree of permanence - only a degree, though - when I was going to Den Haag frequently for work they seemed to love chopping and changing the tram routes every few months). A converted railway like Metrolink is more of a Stadtbahn and is a bit different.
Buses are absolutely comparable with the former when it comes to things like the Oxford Road corridor where either could fulfil the role and either could have a "pay the driver" or off-vehicle ticketing (or a hybrid). Trams in Amsterdam used to be "pay as you board"...
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A city of ~500k inhabitants would be a tram city in France or (former Eastern) Germany, but a cycling city with a skeletal bus network in the Netherlands.
Not true. Den Haag is pretty much bang on your 500K and combines bicycles and trams with an extensive tram network (but few buses). 100-200K and you'd probably be right - your comparable cities are places like Oxford and Cambridge which, er, are also very much cycling cities (being flat helps!)
This shows there’s no single valid approach and British bus cities are just as valid as an approach. Single door buses work well in the British context.
Single door buses work well in one specific British context of the small town "suburb to bus station" route where hardly any stops have both boarding and alighting, and numbers boarding/alighting at each stop are small. They work poorly on cross city routes or pseudotram routes like Oxford Road.
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