The big (but fixable) problem with buses is legibility. When I am in a new city I tend to favour rail over bus because the routes etc are transparent and predictable. Bus networks need good information, maps, signage etc.
Yeah, this is a big problem. When you are traveling or just new to a city it can be hard to figure out where the buses are going or what route to take. To some degree this is inevitable. Bus networks tend to fill in the gaps in your transit network, serving lots of smaller but lower demand routes so there's just going to be more of them than rail lines. But there are also things a lot of cities do to make this even more complicated. Like having the same bus number run slightly different routes at different times of the day (often diverting during rush hour, etc.). There are also concerns like, this route might be running now but will it be running in the opposite direction when I need to come back much later. There's just less consistency of service with buses. And I've also seen buses diverted because of weather conditions, which would have been fine if I *knew* about it, but I was left waiting at a stop the buses weren't actually serving at that time because of snow. There are some cities with good apps for finding your way on bus networks, but this stuff isn't standardized. It's just so much easier to stick to rail lines, you know where they're going to be.
To add one thing, many bus maps have frequent buses and infrequent buses drawn the same or similarly, so it's hard to know where the useful routes are See also: Jarrett Walker
In the Santiago de Chile bus system, this problem is (almost) solved with the massive use of a cell phone application that calculates the most useful routes to your destination and the waiting time for the next bus. This works even at the smallest and most distant stops from the center.
Trains are cool, but buses are just as cool, and the solution to a transit problem depends on the location. In Wuppertal for example, they chose a suspended monorail above the river because of the narrow valley, and it effectively unified the communities. Adelaide chose the O-Bahn Busway which serves its suburbs, the buses avoid traffic with their own guided busway, and they can exit and enter the busway at ease, effectively serving not just Busway stations but also surrounding streets. Buses are a great way to get to a final destination as feeders from train stations, on top of bikes. By prioritizing bicycles, transit, and pedestrian infrastructure, cities can create more livable and vibrant communities! In Jersey City, one could take the PATH from NYC to Journal Square, and then could take a bus to get to their final destination whether it's somewhere like Union City or maybe JC's The Heights. One could board at one of the bus platforms at the Journal Square Transportation Center which serves an important bus hub, not just for NJ Transit and PATH but also the many jitneys/dollar vans. And it's nice and organized with four different platforms lettered A through D, with each platform having a PATH entrance. Not to mention Journal Square also participates in the Citi Bike program just like other locations in Jersey City, Hoboken, and of course NYC. Thus expanding the reach of the Citi Bike program and providing an alternative for more people.
Even though MTR dominates the market in Hong Kong, buses are still a force to be reckon with. Since bus companies in Hong Kong are all private, there is always competition with one another and even with MTR. Long express routes can even be very frequent (departures within every 5 minutes) and can be serving parallel to the MTR. This is why I believe the combination of MTR and buses in Hong Kong is, in my opinion, the key to making HK one of the most successful transport hubs in the world! Heck, you can even get to their Disneyland using the MTR system, which has its own dedicated line that acts as a shuttle between Sunny Bay on the Tung Chung Line and Disneyland Resort. And the trains look so cute! On Oahu, TheBus has a big network. These vehicles provide daily service on 106 routes, including three rapid transit routes and two limited express routes. Because of low cost and wide coverage, many high school students have used the network to get to where they need to go, and since July 2023, it is free for high school students to use the system! And with the Skyline, TheBus acts as feeder services to get people to their final destination from the stations. And on the topic of trolleybuses, even a city like Pyongyang in North Korea has trolleybuses, as it began operations in 1962 and currently has 12 lines! The Pyongyang trolleybuses are in harmony with the trams and Pyongyang Metro.
One thing about bus exclusive right of ways that I feel doesn’t get enough press is the fact that it can also be used by most emergency vehicles, ambulances fitting easily and I’m pretty sure fire trucks could fit as well, being about the same size. So, good bus infrastructure saves lives.
That is how Amsterdam started to over-haul their city in the mid 1970's. Major arterial roads that had 4 lanes in the past were reduced to one traffic lane each way. the center section was raised to make it stand out. Unique traffic lights were added. They use a dot pattern in white or red so that there is zero chance of confusing them with existing traffic lights. This allowed trams to move much more freely, and also busses could use parts of these routes as well as emergency vehicles (from small police patrol cars to their largest fire engines). In the end mass transit moved way better as it was not stuck in local car traffic. At intersections there are dedicated lights that often also add in priority. Win-Win for those using public transport. It started the city on the path where walking, cycling, bus, tram and metro were all way more convenient (often a combination of those) to get around town. You have to be slightly mental to take a car into central Amsterdam these days. Just use one of the 5 or more Park and Ride facilities. It's faster, more convenient and far cheaper than driving and parking in the city center.
In Paris a surprising amount of residents overlook the bus due to the comprehensive metro system. Many times people are surprised to discover their 2-metro + walking trips could be a single direct bus line. If I'm carrying something heavy it also lets me avoid the sometimes multiple flights of stairs to get to and from the trains. You also get nice scenery since they are street running. I've told people the cheapest tour bus you can get is bus #69 (nice) which hits a ton of landmarks. A big downside though is the same positive I mentioned - street running. Unlike a metro with a dedicated right-of-way buses have to stop at intersections and are more subject to blockage. During the march protests my local bus line was nearly non-existent due to always getting stuck at the protests downtown.
Thank you for making this, for some reason in this community there's a lot of hate for busses. As a Londoner busses are lowkey the unsung heroes of this city. Stay healthy and stay blessed brother.
I lived in London in the 90s and I really enjoyed using the buses. They opened up so much of the city. I lived in different parts and when I moved to a new area the first thing I did was get the relevant bus maps. I used the buses far more than the tube in fact.
@@Secretlyanothername Transit nerds often ride and study various transit systems around the world. Just b/c buses r bad where u live doesn't mean they are bad everywhere
Thanks for giving buses the recognition they deserve! 🙏 As someone who's had an affinity for buses (and transit) from a very early age and worked as a driver for almost 20 years, I still believe a bus system done well is an essential tool in giving people mobility.
I think the biggest drawback to buses, compared to rail is that they don't feel as integrated and quick to get the hang of. With rail, you get one map with all the routes and you can quickly create a mental picture of where you can go and the possible connections you can make. Buses, on the other hand, have a map for each route because they rely on the street grid and now you may have to check different maps (that sometimes have a different design that the rail maps, like NYC's) and routes to figure it out. Technology has definitely made this a lot easier and many bus stops have a route map, but it can feel overwhelming at times, specially when there's poor frequency.
Both bus systems I have experience with also provided an integrated bus map, but they get pretty confusing to keep track of whenever multiple routes converge on a single street. I think the fundamental difference between bus and train maps is that train systems have fewer routes, so the map can be simplified accordingly.
i would LOVE to get more toronto bus content. you're always touting the TTC's suburban bus network as being among the best in north america, but you don't have a dedicated video discussing ~why~ that is!
I view it like this, if trains and metros are the aorta and arteries, then buses are arterioles that branch off and feed into into the aorta and arteries.
Service frequency needs to be optimized for the area so people aren’t waiting more than 10-15 minutes for a bus, the busses aren’t overcrowded AND there’s no bunching (3 buses show up at once, then it’s 20 minutes for the next one.)
“This bus is too uncomfortable to ride in, so instead I will drive my car on the same bumpy road the bus uses.” To be fair I have ridden in buses with bad suspensions, and cars with great ones, and the same road would feel much better in the latter than the former, but still… I currently live in a small city of around 50k people, that for the longest time had only paratransit, because it was believed that public transportation is only for those physically incapable of getting around on their own (not for poor people, who are assumed to ride bicycles if they can’t afford a car-we’ve got decent bike infrastructure). They’ve recently started operating their mini buses along fixed routes with labeled stops. Hopefully it will be successful and they can upgrade to bigger buses, better stops, and more frequency, but it’s a start, and just about the least costly way a small locality can dip its toes into transit. They already have vehicles and drivers, why not put up signs and drive those vehicles along actual bus routes?
The challenge with permanence/fleixibility is that a bus route can easily be shut down or rerouted from one day to another. It can easily be moved to a street one or two blocks away or the existing bus route can suddenly switch destination with another bus route. In my city in Denmark there have been some changes in the bus routes, meaning that some people now need to change and some people have a longer walk to the nearest busstop, because the bus now takes another road than before. Some NIMBYS also got the two bus routes moved from one street to another, further away from the city centre. In Copenhagen they changed all the bus routes when the Metro City Ring (M3) went into service in 2019, making a direct bus trip to a bus + metro trip for many people living along the bus routes but not along the new metro. With dedicated infrastructure (BRT or LRT) there is a commitment to keep the same route and a decent frequency, which is mostly important for developers and their ability to sell and rent out apartments and office space close to transit.
I'm torn on buses. I use them in central London because you can tap in with contactless and if you miss one, you can literally see the next one. They're also really easy to hop on and off. I tried to use the bus network in Edinburgh recently and had to buy a ticket from the driver. They arrived at irregular intervals and took different routes. Many were cancelled.
Yes, frequency is important. By the way, Japan has long had a significant shortage of bus drivers. Furthermore, the large number of layoffs during the Corona pandemic led to a critical shortage of drivers and overwork after demand returned. As a result, there are even bus routes in many parts of the country that are in danger of being closed, even though both residents and operators want to maintain the routes.
Grew up in a city of 150k inhabitants where the entire local public transport was carried out by busses, with some bus stops (not a terminal, hub or alike) being served by more than 20 different bus lines
Where I live we’re also just way better at busses than trains. Busses are more reliable (84% on time for busses vs 70% on time for the largest light rail line) and bus oriented projects are completed within budget and with minimal if any delays. By contrast our main light rail extension is 10 years overdue and it’s budget has more than tripled. So some of this is just city specific.
My big problem with busses in Berlin is, that I *never* know on which end of the intersection the stop is. There *needs* to be a map of all stops in the immediate vicinity on every corner of the intersection, but somehow there isn't. The problem is also compounded by the fact that in some cases the stops for the nighttime-underground-replacement-service are at different locations than the construction-work-underground-replacement-service
I think the biggest flaw with American bus systems is they too often follow the outdated hub/spoke model of route planning. Few people will ride if they're forced to transfer downtown vs. go straight from suburb to suburb. I'm very thankful to live in a US city with a very grid-like network similar to Toronto. Combine that with our quick easy mobile fare payment system, pulse scheduling, frequencies ranging from every 10-40 minutes, and service hours from 03:00-01:00 every day, and our buses in the area have even higher ridership than the rail system.
52 y.o. Mexico City native here. Many people think that the golden era of bus networks down here was when it all was organized within the umbrellas of Distrito Federal's "Ruta 100" and State of México's "Sistema de Transporte Troncal" in the 1980's and early 1990's. Having a rationally ordered network based on a grid really helps getting around.
The thing about being cheap and flexible to deploy is that it's very easy to do buses badly, and the US largely has. Create an hourly bus line that runs 5 days a week, and a city manage can declare their job done. Even in Montreal or Osaka, many bus lines run every 30 minutes, which is not good. And 'cheap' usually means "running in traffic" which means the bus will be inherently slower and less reliable than driving, at least before parking considerations. Running in traffic ruins even high frequency buses; I grew up with a nominal "every 5 minutes" bus that could mean waiting 30 minutes for 6 buses to come at once. Bus bunching. Montreal's frequent bus line that I took also had "yeah we're diverting it from these stops for several months" in a way that usually doesn't happen with trains. The habit of transit maps indicating good and bad bus lines the same way doesn't help. When I moved to Boston the map seemed wonderfully rich in bus lines... then I looked at the frequency table, and found that maybe 13/200 were any good. But I had to research it myself. They have improved that recently, but it only took them 100 years... Meanwhile, if you build a metro (subway, el) at all then it's inherently out of traffic, and the cost means that they probably won't skimp _too_ much on frequency. Plus a large chunk of the population is prone to motion sickness, and prefer trains to buses that can sway side to side more, even if the train is a streetcar stuck in traffic. The tracked nature of streetcars/trams seems to interact better with pedestrianized streets; it's easier to be sure you won't be hit by a tram.
My comment won’t get seen, but I was thinking that if we realistically want to replace cars, we would need to give as much route flexibility as possible: buses are great, but I think we need more accessible “unlimited travel” subscriptions. Usually bus tickets have a fare for every trip, and in many cities you can have monthly/yearly subscriptions for every ride within the city; but these subscriptions are usually only for students, or they’re only for cities. Why don’t such things exist for suburban dwellers too? I mean, I live in a european suburbia, and I often need to go from a suburban place to another.
You just got seen! And I totally agree with you, and that is easily fixable if the right people want to do the right thing... Which of itself is not easy at all. We used to have to buy a subscription for each company, service, and sometimes even zone, which made for awful practices where the city has two stops, they know everyone heads for stop 2, so they make stop 2 a new zone, effectively forcing you to either stop two kilometers away from your destination, or pay extra for another zone. My route to work would easily reach €100 a month, and I couldn't use it for much else because of the same restrictions you mentioned. Back in 2019 our government did probably one of the few actual great things they've ever done: In collaboration with the regional authorities, they turned the entire metropolitan area, comprised of about 18 municipalities, dozens of cities and towns, and effectively 30% of the entire country's population, they made a joint subscription with every single transit company: You pay €40, €20 if a student or elder, free under 12 years old or some other special conditions, and you get access to every single option for every single city and suburb, which is great because even the tiny social neighborhood near us of ten or so blocks has four bus stops, but zones made it far more expensive to use them properly. Something like this could be done if more politicians had the incentive (some left-wing parties have proposed a national subscription that costs just €10, while right-wing parties have made it free for residents in the municipalities they run). It's effectively far better because, just like healthcare or education, everyone paying for it through taxes drives the costs down for each individual, but it also allows private companies to stay in business and have an incentive to outperform the competition even more, because now there's no extra cost stopping me from using a train if my bus is late, and the company will lose the government's money from my ride and everyone else's. They even made it far more extensive last year for buses: All major private companies joined into one, with each company operating in a different set of municipalities, and renewed their fleets with more than a thousand new vehicles, leaving only a few dozen vehicles that were electric, biogas, or very recent and still in great condition. They still retain the incentive to outperform public companies and railways, but now you also have the added benefit that even if you do not have a subscription and decide to purchase a ticket, it costs the same everywhere for each route type (local, regional, etc.), and if I'm not mistaken, much like train tickets, you have a period of three hours after purchase where the ticket works everywhere, even if you get on a new bus. It all comes down mostly to political and private will, so while the plan is easy, the conditions are nearly impossible to achieve.
"but I think we need more accessible “unlimited travel” subscriptions. " well in good networks there are plenty of those options. Like a day / week / month pass for the entire local network, a smaller part of the local network, or even an entire state's or country's network. Also pass for groups, families etc
here in my city in canada, busses are actually quite decent, nothing like the netherlands, but decent, we got "rapid transit" a separate road for busses and emergency vehicles only, used to take 40 mins+ to get downtown, now its about 17 mins
I do wonder if the seats on buses and trains will be comfortable enough for my best friend. She has very severe chronic pain thanks to a car crash when she was 11. She hates driving because it's stressful and it hurts her. I'd hope the seats on your average public transit would be adequate, or at least offset the pain from needing to drive.
highly depends on where you are at ... riding the NYC subway is like driving a cobblestone street at 60 mph without suspension. Riding subways in other cities it might be an entirely different story, with smooth tracks etc
Buses in NYC are beyond awful - you might end up waiting an hour for a bus that's scheduled to come every 15 minutes! Some of the routes have an average speed of around 4mph - barely faster than walking!
Hi Reece, there’s currently a big Bus Review going on in Sydney which is quite interestingly providing alot of data on how buses do the heavy lifting for much less than the cost of rail, but are lacking investment and new services. You would enjoy the reports. There is also a transport for nsw on street transit white paper out now too, which is very good, and they are seeking input on overseas use of bus rapid transit. Have a look.
I remember when Aalborg first got a BRT system instead of the Light rail treatment that Aarhus and Odense got, which surprised me. However, it was still a valid option since Aalborg is a bit behind compared to the three other big Danish cities, and I still appreciated that we got something, considering the lackluster Light rail that is underperforming in both Odense and Aarhus and hopefully will do better when it gets finished in Copenhagen.
Here in Berlin, the bus routes form some kind of very fine-meshed network. This would be impossible with trains or anything else relying on a dedicated infrastructure. For example, I'm living around 150 meters away from some bus node in one of the outer districts of the city, and from that bus station (which actually consists of seven individual bus stop positions) there are six lines departing, each one with two destinations (because none of those lines has it's terminus here). During daytime, there are around 80-100 departures per hour. Okay, a bus ride isn't really comfortable. But it's pretty convenient that there are so many departures, that you don't have to look on the schedules, you can just go to that bus node and wait for a moment. Usually, you won't wait there for more than a very few minutes during daytime. We also have bus service at night here, but between 0 and 5 o'clock, it's proably a good idea to know the actual times of departure, because during night time, there are only buses every 30 minutes. Only problem with our bus network: it's hardly comprehensible for people visiting our city. For example, if you want to ride home from Kreuzberg to our district during night time, you'll have to change three times, and the times for changing from bus to another at intermediate stations are very short. You'll exactly have to know before where to walk (from one of the stop positions to another). If you know your way, you can change from one bus to another without any need to wait, because the schedules of the different lines involved are synchronized. But if you aren't quick enough, you'll lose half an hour. And many visitors are shocked at first if you tell them "takes only not much longer than half an hour, but we'll have to change three times on that way".
I used to take the bus to work until i got fed up of it being constantly late or not showing up at all. This was the first bus of the day at 6am and i was getting on at about the 3rd stop on the line in an almost rural area so no reason for it to be late really other than the driver couldn't be bothered getting out of bed in time. In the end i ended getting myself a little motorbike and my life instantly improved. I was paying £10 a week for a weekly bus pass that would get me to and from work and that was all, any other travel wouod cost extra. When i got the bike i would spend about £10 a week on fuel and that would cover all my travel for the week. Getting the bus to work would take about an hour on the bus or about 20 mins on the bike. Other bike costs came to about £200 per year which would cover tax, insurance and mot. Could do my own bike maintence so that wasnt expensuve just tiime consuming. Woild never go back to buses now, too inconvenient and expensive.
I just got back from vacation in Oahu, Hawaii and used the local bus network to get around. It was basically the best designed bus only transit system I've seen in the United States. The frequencies were pretty great and while not packed, the buses seemed decently filled with people. Wikipedia states that around 10% of Oahu's population uses the bus system every day, which is pretty decent by American standards. In contrast, the buses in the suburban counties of California seem really empty most of the time.
The sort of transit I'm used to is massive buses with 100 seats which will not leave the bus station until all 100 seats are filled. There are like10 companies competing for your attention to get into their bus that all go to the same place with no stops, you hop of a moving bus. The seats are uncomfortable and vomit stained and the floors are sawdust. F. transit, I'd rather just drive a Land cruiser everyday
Took a bus in NY. Don't think it had any suspension. Quite a shaky ride. And it was stuck in the crazy trafick on Manhattan. And you could only pay with cash.
It's important to note that busses are great if they're riding on only bus road, else they're stuck in traffic like all the cars and people would just drive a car.
As a relatively frequent user of Buses I'm sure I've said "If I had a license I would never use a bus in my life". Seriously, that transport method is just quite bad when it wants to. Also, The routing of them are quite messy at times and vulnerable to anything road-related. Seriously, i feel that buses being so bad is why people choose metro or cars.
The city that really made me love buses is Hannover, Germany. In their system, high floor trams radiate from the city center while busses circle it in rings. That means that you can usually get absolutely everywhere with at most one well timed interchange. And because bus interchanges are such a core part of their concept instead of just a discount train, the fleet is as modern and shiny as if it had only opened months ago.
Well a light rail system attracts more passengers. There's German word for it ,,Schienenbonus" and some articles about it mainly in German. Use a translator and you should understand them well. I witnessed it msyself. Where my parents live and I lived as a child, there was a bus line with a bendy bus going down the road every 10 minutes. It wasn't particulary full only at rush hour but no packed. Almost always you could sit. Later they build a tram line and now vehicles with twice the capacity than the old buses struggle to fit all passengers on a 5 minute interval. Yes a few new appartments where built along the line but nothing major. The big blocks already where there about 30 years or more prior to the construction of the tram. We had two new built tram lines for many decades now and on both lines it was the same story.
Winnipeg's approach to transit can best be described as too little, too late in more ways than one. The city has a very limited BRT network, even though NewFlyer is a Winnipeg company, and even though it has electric buses you would never know it by looking at the Winnipeg Transit fleet. The city seems more interested in catering to cars than properly funding a transit system that, among other things, includes buses with NewFlyer's latest technology.
Living in a small city with no transit, I would love to have busses. I'm in a large apartment with so many people and not enough parking, plus a few stores in walking distance. I feel like a bus would make living without a car possible for some people here.
It's hard to get excited about buses for several reasons, even putting aside their undeserved reputation of being the transportation of people too poor to afford cars. I live in a large urban area and the main issue with buses is schedule management. If I check the schedule either posted on the sign or on the app on my phone and it says the bus will arrive at my stop at 5:55 one would reasonably expect it to arrive there at that time. But the actual time of arrival is closer to 6:10 or worse at 5:43 meaning it's gone before I even get to the bus stop. In either case, I end up late for work. This should not be a hard problem to manage given the available technology.
Even top quality brt interior seem to be kinda smaller and cramped compared to rail solutions, raised seats and narrow walkways, definitely prefer bringing my bike on light rail.
I love trains, trams, and subways as much as the next person, but as a bus driver, thanks for talking about the bus a little more. Im sure you have either read it or heard about it, but the book "Better Buses Better Cities" by Steven Higashide. good stuff :-)
I love your content @RMTransit, keep making this stuff it is awesome. Just a quick one. Do you have an explainer on Melbourne's new "Metro tunnel" yet or could that possibly be a new video in the works. I'm from Melbourne and would like to know your thoughts on it as well as the Suburban Rail Loop.
4:24 Belgian here: my local (TEC) bus line "only" runs from 5:30AM to 9:50PM on weekdays, with two buses per hour on average - and it's already good enough (there are few people after 8PM) Yeah not all Belgians live near Brussels, isn't that crazy?
"Electric buses are more comfortable than diesel buses"... tell me that you've never ridden on a Proterra Catalyst without telling me that you've never ridden on a Proterra Catalyst. And apparently as much as passengers hate those buses, drivers like them even less. I agree with the premise that buses can be just as good as trains, but the "electrification of buses will make them nicer" crowd have the same energy as the people who think that autonomous cars will solve all the problems that cars cause in cities. Give me back the vibrations of a diesel pusher if it means not having the jerky starts, absolutely rubbish suspension, and horrible reliability of the Proterras. Also not fun when your schedule for an express bus was built around the assumption that you'd have the acceleration of a diesel bus, which the Proterra buses don't come anywhere close to. Overhead wire electrification is amazing... when I visit San Francisco, I will go out of my way to use the routes with overhead electrification, even the most questionable of those buses have a more comfortable ride than the nicer diesel buses, but I've yet to see a battery electric bus that was superior to a comparable diesel (especially hybrid diesel) buses.
It all depends on the model I think. My university recently got a few electric New Flyers, and they are quite nice compared to the old Gilligs other than the hard plastic seats. It’s almost surreal how quiet it is inside. I don’t think electric buses in general are worse than diesel; I just think some electric models have unrelated drawbacks that make for a less pleasant experience.
Are you serious? All this whining and you’re basing your opinion on all electric buses off one single model? Of course, if one is bad, all others must be bad too! Electric buses where I live are smooth, quick-accelerating and quite quiet. They can maintain schedules laid out for diesel buses with ease, thanks to their superior performance. Just because your buses suck, doesn’t mean everyone else’s do too.
@@bahnspotterEU based on your profile, I'm guessing you are based in Germany, so you might not have this context, but that one model is one of four models available and it happens to be one of the more popular for transit agencies to purchase out of those very limited options. Until the US starts allowing more bus imports, that is going to be the state of things here, shitty buses built more for their ability to get tax incentives than anything resembling actual quality. And, if your goal is to get people on the bus, a proven and reliable technology that really can have a focus on ride experience because all the technical aspects have already been solved will always bring more people onto buses than new technology rushed to the market for the sake of tax incentives. Would it be great if US transit agencies could buy imports? Yeah, it would, but the politics behind the "made in America mandates" make it almost impossible to change. In the meantime, I stand by what I said, with the caveat that this applies primarily to the United States, that battery electric buses are garbage not yet ready for widespread use. That's before even getting into the aspects that Reece is leaving out, like the additional wear and tear on roads from these much heavier buses (which, greatly cuts down on the supposed long term cost benefits, especially if the transit agency is responsible for maintaining their own right of way, or if the city decides to take money out of the transit budget to pay for the additional road upkeep), the operational constraints put in place by range and charging concerns (yeah, in route rapid charging stations are an option, but they are going to eat into your savings awfully quickly), and of course the elephant in the room, the environmental challenges around safely disposing of the batteries at the end of their service life. That Germany has found a way to make battery electric buses work is great, but I'll continue fighting for proper electrification with overhead wires or failing that, alternative fuels that are already proven so we can focus on rider experience (such as natural gas, something that every landfill and sewage processing plant produces as a byproduct and most often just gets burned off on site instead of being harvested and used for something useful).
6:59 Aww even the canadian buses are nice and say sorry for not being in service. But it's ok everyone needs to go to the doctor and have a check-up from time to time 🚍💙
While the analogy is not perfect, analogies never are. I tend to think of buses as the 'infantry' of transit. Can handle a lot of smaller missions by themselves, never gets much recognition, does all the various "dirty work" no one else can or wants to do and are always present in some form or other. Sure, for the big jobs you preferably want trams, metros, urban rail etc. (Tanks, artillery etc. in this analogy.) But all of those usually are less effective and more vulnerable if not supported by buses to complement the gaps in this system and act as an emergency backup.
Great video to watch. I live in regional Australia in the community of Albury/Wodonga. The problem I have with bus services is that state governments have neglected them over the years. Just look in the state of Victoria where many bus routes have been neglected for years. Many new developments and housing estates are often forced to wait years before they get their first bus route. It's much longer in regional Victoria. The Suburb of Killara in Wodonga has been in developing since around 2013 and has had no public bus route for a decade. Albury has got it's bus network upgraded. The upgrade just feels like a set and forget. Governments come in and upgrade bus networks and then they forget about it, we need our local bus network to be upgraded more frequently, if not, then we need to have a massive expansion of our bus Network to areas that will be developed in the future. Probably may sound silly to some but if we expand our bus Network to areas that currently have nothing built but will be built in the future then people are able to move in knowing that if they don't have a car, at least there's a bus service. In many places, buses are often the closest mode of public transport to their place of residence. A bus network that doesn't meet the needs of residents is just one of the symptoms of a terribly designed urban space.
Buses are awesome. They sound great as well. You can't beat a Mercedes Bus engine paired with a classic ZF transmission. The sound is insane. But buses are usually inferior to trains. Trains are much more comfortable. Overall the car still wins, obviously.
I think it's a positively terrible idea to spend enough on buses and road surfaces to make them as comfortable as trams. I've lived in Brisbane and Melbourne. Brisbane has some of the best buses in the world and they're still not as nice as some of our most run down tram lines in Melbourne. Batteries aren't as environmentally friendly as over head wires, tyres produce a LOT of microplastic, buses - even electric buses - aren't as pleasant to be a pedestrian around. Buses are fine as a stop gap but once you're considering a BRT you should probably just bite the bullet and build a tram line, LRT, or metro.
If more people ride buses, there would be less cars on the street, and therefore less traffic. But people don't want to ride a bus that gets stuck in traffic, so they'll continue to drive cars and cause more traffic. It's a chicken and egg problem!
@@InventorZahran It's not. put in a bus lane, and a dedicated bus traffic light with priority at strategic places where busses tend to get stuck and your bus now has free flow.
@@shadeblackwolf1508 You can't just "put in a bus lane", at least not everywhere. In my home city, the vast majority of roads are one lane per direction. There is simply no space to fit bus lanes.
@@bahnspotterEU if it's a grid city, put the bus one street over, through the residential, and remove cars for non-residents. That also does the trick.
It bums me out when people disparage buses. I love riding the bus. In a good bus network, you have a stop right on your corner and the bus shows up 5 minutes later so you can connect to wherever you need to go. Buses don't get the love they deserve in America and I think it often comes down to classist beliefs that the bus "sucks therefore it's for poor people"
The last time I rode a bus was January, 2020. The bus was filled with vagrants riding around to stay out of the cold. They occupied literally every seat. If you think I am going to accept a 4x multiplier on my transit time to ride in that environment, you are deceiving yourself. I went back to driving and haven't been on a bus since. I rode it for 15 years but no more. The biggest problem on the bus is the other people you have to interact with on the bus. It doesn't take but one occurrence of a drunk aggressive rider or a persistent panhandler to leave a permanent memory. Those (multiple) experiences didn't make me "uncomfortable". I perceived them as threats. Since I have the option to drive, I exercised it. If you want people to ride the bus, you need to deal with this issue. Security is the unstated issue. It's the foundational assumption upon which rests every other argument you make. You need to prioritize who gets served. You need to prioritize the older woman with mobility problems who uses the bus to go to work. You need to de-prioritize the vagrants who so cluttered the isle with their junk that she nearly fell before she could get to the door.
Bus networks need to be frequent, actually more frequent than Metro Rail lines. Small Cities and Suburbs of Major Cities should have bus lines operating every 2 to 6 minutes during Peak Hours, everfy 5 to 10 minutes during Middays, Evenings and Weekends and 30 minutes during Late Nights. Major Cities should operate bus lines every 1 to 5 minutes on Weekdays, every 3 to 7 minutes on Weekends, every 4 to 8 minutes during Evenings and every 15 to 30 minutes during Late Nights. Rural areas should operate bus lines every 5 to 10 minutes during Peak Hours, every 10 to 20 minutes during Middays, Evenings and Weekends and every 30 minutes during Late Nights. If comparing to Rail lines in Major Cities, Major rail lines should operate trains every 2 to 6 minutes during Peak Hours, every 5 to 15 minutes during Middays, Evenings and Weekends, and every 20 to 30 minutes during Late Nights. Gives you an idea of the capacity level.
I grew up in Crete, Greece and considering the relatively small population of the region and the fact that Greece is a poorer country, the state owned Intercity Buses (What we'd call coaches in the UK) are extremely efficient clean comfortable and cheap. It's very unlikely a train network could ever be built in such a place but you can get a coach to basically any small village town or city on the island. I think growing up with this made me appreciate the benefits of buses/coaches in many situations, such as smaller or poorer areas over rail.
Agreed, visited Crete more times than I care to count and the bus system is excellent. Some routes might not run frequently but when they do they're clean, on time and inexpensive.
@@libman2006 True! A lot of the buses to the villages up in the mountains will only run twice a day once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I believe the idea or if this was to allow farmers to go down to the towns for the day. Would be great if they started adding more routes to these places to encourage locals to use buses instead of cars and even encourage tourists to visit more places sustainably.
I think North America should adopt the various “kinds” of buses that exist in Europe. You have short distance, with more standing than seating space, and then longer-distance, with lots of seats, free-WiFi, and USB charge ports.
One example I can think of is that there is a bus going from Peterborough to Norwich which lasts 3 hours. Most do not go the full route getting off at Kings Lynn or Dereham and a train is preferable after that. It is likely not part of the £2,50 (previously £2) for journeys over an hour.
Living in Singapore, I’m pretty fortunate to live in a country with such incredible public transport, having such an efficient train system and bus system combined makes for an awesome experience, and you can definitely get by without a car. Buses in singapore are pretty extensive, and you can typically get anywhere in the country with one or two bus services; plus, most bus services come every 10 minutes or even less, so we don’t even need to check a schedule. Bus tracking systems are pretty detailed too, and you can check how long until the next bus arrives, the subsequent bus, as well as what type of bus it is (double-decker, bendy). With how comfortable the double-decker buses are, I typically enjoy hanging out with my friends while chilling out at the back of the top decks of the buses
MRT in SG is great but the stations can be huge and can take so long to actually get from platform to street level. I loved the buses, even more convenient
@@monketok141 Yeah, that’s one of my main gripes with the MRTs here. I also wish that they would make express trains, as I’d love for public transport to finally be faster than cars, but at least we have trains in the first place plus the island is so small so it doesn’t take that long to get anywhere
@@Secretlyanothername Actually sometimes we prefer buses over trains as the former has more seats (e.g. a double decker bus is licensed to carry 135 passengers with 82 seats, while a train car is licensed to carry 320 passengers with only 34-62 seats) or because some train stations are deep are less convenient. Look at how much unhappiness there was when service was cut on buses 22, 66, 75, 162, 167, 506
I would also stress that for buses to be as comfortable as trams and trains, the roads need to in good condition. I had a recent 30 minute ride on a trolleybus in Bratislava. The vehicle was modern and quiet, But the road surface was so bad that the journey made me feel ill.
From my experience the road surface isn`t the biggest problem here. For some reason Bratislava always manages to put the maximum possible amount of manhole covers in bus lanes, turning articulated buses into a trampoline when you ride over them.
Bratislava also just has a weirdly designed transit system in general. For such a small city, it's surprisingly hard and uncomfortable to get anywhere useful, despite a system that's decent on paper.
@@majorfallacy5926I disagree, Bratislava is outside of the immediate city center oriented around a small number of large streets (say 6-7 boulevards), these are covered by tram lines which have an interval of around 2-3 minutes during peak hours. Those are complemented by a bus/trolleybus network connecting them to other parts of the city, so that even the most remote neighborhoods get a bus every 15 minutes. It`s those intervals and coverage that make up for the screwed up way the city is designed. I`ve traveled on systems in Europe which were way worse.
@@placeholder1088 maybe. I'm from vienna so my perception might be skewed, but I always hated having to go anywhere on the other side of the danube in bratislava. 15 min intervals seem high for the only way to get to main station. I think the main issue is outside connections though, it's easier to go to towns in austria than slovakia from bratislava.
10 месяцев назад
Living in submilion city in EU with trams and buses i would say that bus is always less comfortable than tram. Even on smooth surface there are tighter curves and bus is bouncing more to sides than tram, which is a problem if you are standing and trying to read a book ;)
Fully agree! Case in point: In my extended family, children tend to get car-sick quite easily, so did I when I was a child and so does my daughter. However, they never get car-sick on a tram or a train, but they get car-sick on a bus. And I am talking about Viennese and Swiss buses, so both road and vehicle quality tends to be quite good. (Even though to be honest, I don't know about electric buses. My daughter hardly ever gets car-sick in the car anymore since we got an EV, so the discomfort in IC cars and buses might also have something to do with the engine vibrations and the less linear acceleration in comparison with electric vehicles.) Another case in point: Often when I decide whether to use public transport or my car (or bicycle) for a journey, I decide for public transport when it's rail-based because I can get some work done on my laptop on the way. With a bus, even a smooth-running one, that's quite a challenge.
The thing about buses is they can only go as fast as the traffic around them, which makes it a slow system for highly congested roads. This can be solved with fully dedicated lanes, but then rail would be applicable as well and would have a higher capacity and speed. I might be biased though since I've lived all my life in a city with very poor quality mobility that relies almost only on buses, Lima. Loved the video, cheers from Peru.
@@thomaswill37 Agreed, Lima BRT has fully separated lines however it gets excesively crowded and complicated because it doesn't have enough capacity to suit the demand. At rush hour you have to make a pretty long line to get in (squish in really) a bus. To kinda solve this they use express lines (16 different services using the same stations!) that skip some stops, but it's not enough and it makes it very hard to use for first timers
Thank you for an excellent video. Writing as a British commentator, l would however stress that for buses to be an excellent form of public transport they need to be controlled by public bodies. The Britsh privatisation and deregulation of buses has been disastrous..
Also, Britain is too “one size fits all” with buses, and single entrance double deck buses, which are really best suited to faster interurban routes, should not be the dominant form of urban transport in major cities of over 500,000 people, as they often are here. Double deck buses have way too long dwell times at each stop and really shouldn’t be used in cities at all
@@samuell.foxton4177no real replacement on British streets, most places I can think of which have tried to use articulated buses have found them too cumbersome (alongside tending to be unreliable) for the narrower streets and gone back to double deckers within years. Could do with more doors on buses outside London though.
Generally speaking buses can be pretty good if they are controlled/regulated by the municipality such as in London or Edinburgh where I live but in places where they've been deregulated the service is not so good such as e.g. Glasgow.
I just don't get his love for buses. I mean buses are better than cars... But they still have many of the downsides of cars. They get stuck in traffic, just like cars. They create multiple types of pollution and damage roads, just like cars. And they're dangerous and unpleasant for pedestrians and cyclists, just like cars are. Almost anything a bus can do a tram can do better. Maybe buses have a niche in exurbs where it's not viable to build a tram line. But buses really have no place and no benefit in inner areas.
The problem with flexibility is a lack of dependability. Just ask yourself: would you rather buy a home next to a new bus stop or a new train station or tram stop? Both lines could be discontinued, but rail routes take more effort to rip up and generally come with more advanced warning. A bus can be rerouted at the stroke of a pen.
Not if the bus drivers are skilled like at all? Where I live everyone, bus drivers and cyclists, know of this problem so it doesn't actually become one 🤷
@@jan-lukas Bendy buses are banned in London and many other UK cities for this reason. My city got some and they were only allowed to run a single park and ride route that didn't go through the city centre because they weren't deemed safe.
Here in the UK we have a lot of double-decker buses. When I was young I would always go up to the top deck. Now I am older I go to the bottom deck but I am so glad the young ones all go up to the top deck. 😀
In Sydney the new government has been talking about fixing on road transport. We're going to have a terrific railway system when the metro opens next year, but Western Sydney is still going to have bad last mile connections. When buses are given right of way and dedicated lanes on major arterial roads, they can be very effective.
The problem I have with buses is they feeling of uncertainty you get as you wait for them. The bus stop nearest my house, has no timetables, no shelter, no electronic live update sign...nothing. It's a sign on a pole. My local operator has a twitter page, but they are very bad at updating it with live route info. I've know the bus to be early, i've known it to be 40 mins late, and I've experienced complete no-shows. There's also the prospect of a road closure (that i'm not aware of) causing the route to be diverted or cancelled. Yes, i know there are easy solutions to all these problems, but this is just my experience of buses here in the UK, and why often dread having to rely on them.
Buses are great for what they are. Low upfront costs, high operating costs for routes where there is no demand or need for speed for rail. Pretty useful for connecting other modes too.
It's a huge asset for smaller cities. I live outside of a city with 200,000 people in Austria, so there are only 4 tram lines, but the entire city is connected by a massive network of busses, that even extend to my home, which is in the middle of a forest. The trams are putting in a ton of work for capacity, but it's the buses that really allow you to rely on the system and get to wherever you need to.
as a bus op, I can say that buses can be fast if they are on a road with high enough speed limit and no pesky cars. sometimes running a route like 606 or 604 we often can go 70 mph but again thats not something we can do on street cordors.@@RMTransit
@@Ruzzky_Bly4t Exactly. Rail for heavy lifting, bus for lower demand point to point travel. That's why I find BRT a bit confusing, because you get the high opex and capacity of buses, with the limitations of rail (because most of them operate on separate lanes).
To quote Ned Flanders... You're straining to do some explaining... Aka playing Devil's Advocate. ;-) It's a losing game but god bless... You do raise some good points HOWEVER the only real points I will concede is their nimbleness and affordability but that's also a detriment too if you ask me. With only half the shelf-life but more ongoing costs buses are like a white elephant that constantly needs larger amounts of food and TLC... which is no wonder GM and its companies were so gung-ho on giving trams the heave ho... And also their lifespan is about half of a tram. So you really do buy cheap you buy twice... I think batteries and electric tech will change that equation thoroughly but so far even the most progressive transit system in Canada, ETS, is only partially electrified... There are companies in Canada doing bus conversions for transit companies and I'd love to see a video on that. Taking existing Nova and New Flyers and giving them a true half-life makeover that will extend their lifespan FAR past its natural diesel timeline...
I remember being in high school and complaining about the TTC busses we had to ride home. My friend from northern China then told me they're actually not too bad in his experience, so that kind of gave me the first moment of pause to really give busses a fair shake.
Its really interesting how peoples gut reaction is always "they're horrible!" but when you talk about it people realize pretty quickly they actually have a lot going for them
