8 years ago when I moved into my current house (on the edge of a housing estate)...Many people parked on the street and the small local hopper (18 seater?) buses use to come through the estate maybe carrying 2 to 3 people with no problem.
8 years on we get full size single (30+) decker buses with only 1 - 2 passengers struggling to get through past parked cars and the tight corners in the estate. On a couple of occasions
the driver has had to get people out of the house to either move their car or fold the mirrors in. The amount of street parking has actually not increased, but the introduction of humps mean the buses now pitch slightly left and right.
Of course anyone not an OAP or on benefit will pay the bus fare as it costs over £1 to go for just a mile away, so they take the car.
The bus company constantly complains it is struggling with costs...so my question is what ever happened to the small buses.. are they disappearing from other areas as well?
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Buses cannot be bought on the basis of one route - they have to be capable of doing any route, hence most buses are the same size now. It is far more costly to buy a load of smaller buses for the occasional tight route than run a bigger one.
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There's also disabled accessability - those overgrown minibuses were, in the main, useless for anyone who was in a wheelchair or couldn't climb stairs.
Would agree with the OAP observation, though, my local service is a virtually "over 60s" service, on their free passes with no-one else using them 'cause they are too expensive... yet another well thought out government scheme!
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years ago a lot of the small buses were based on vans. transits. mercs. sherpas. now with all public transport.there as to be access for the disabled.low floors and more mordern buses.the smallest buses are now 28 to 33 seaters.a lot longer and wider..
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driver has had to get people out of the house
Because of this problem, Arriva has re-routed some services in my town!
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It definitely has a lot to do with both the Disability Discrimination Act and being able to use all the buses in the depot on all the routes, but it is also to do with the fact that most 'breadvans with seats' have manual gearboxes. These day, as the large groups mainly operate buses with automatic gearboxes, they only train new recruits to drive autos. Hence the manual gearbox minibus is very much on the way out. When I trained with Stagecoach 11 years ago, they ran a huge fleet of Mercedes 709Ds with manual boxes. Nowadays, their 'standard' small bus (but significantly larger than the Merc) is the Optare Solo with an automatic box.
Cheers.
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Just a note - if a bus has trouble, wouldnt a firetruck have trouble aswell?
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We have a bus route up our local road;when I first moved here (30yrs ago)we got allsorts of full size buses including double-deckers and full-length singles.They then changed to glorified minibuses but these were nether reliable nor big enough.We now have an intermediate bus with auto-trans but it has wheels at front and back and is less maneouvrable than the full length single deckers that had wheelbases little longer than a car.Incidentally,saw in France recently,a double bendy bus-three sections.
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I know someone who has sympathy with bus, and particularly fire engine drivers.
Often, when he approaches a gap in his car he considers too small for a fire engine, he uses the handbrake to lock the rear wheels and 'screech' the rear tyres, and then slaps the outside of the drivers door to produce satisfying 'clang'.
He reckons this often brings out the owners of the tightly parked vehicles to inspect them for damage and sometimes even move them.
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if a bus has trouble wouldnt a firetruck have trouble aswell?
Emergency services will move your car free of charge then bill you for the damage to their vehicle later. In extreme cases could be classed as causing an obstruction.
If the bus driver is knocking on doors to get door mirrors folded in, I'd be looking for somewhere else to park or folding the mirrors in each night. Delivery drivers in 7.5 tonne trucks on the run up to Christmas tend not to knock on doors, well not front doors, just car doors.
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My point was that it sounds like the problem is more down to inconsiderate parking than the size of buses.
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Clearly the parked cars are causing an obstruction if they prevent a bus from negotiating its route. OK, when the bigger buses first appeared on the route, the problem of parked cars was understandable but now that people know, it's up to the car owners to make sure they are not obstructing the buses.
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My point was that it sounds like the problem is more down to inconsiderate parking
Or roads that weren't built for modern traffic? I know that our local minimart has a delivery from a Nisa Artic every couple of days - its in a 60s/70s built estate and whilst it can get down its hardly a suitable vehicle to take through a residential estate... I tend to feel that deliveries to shops should be from smaller vans not artics and the only large vehicles that should allowed in residential estates should be fire engines, and even then as little as possible!
And I'm sure that if they really wanted the bus manufacturers could produce a smaller bus that still complied with disabled access... if they really wanted to!!!
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IIRC roads were built for traffic, not for parking.
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Re Roads and inconsiderate parking - this is a residential area, it sort of gets used as a rat run and also because so many many people live here, the bus company feels obliged to go here.
The estate was built in the 1960s - 70's and some of the roads in the 1880's. Many houses are terraced or the were only allocated one space per house in parking areas.
The fire engine doesn't seem to have a problem. I suspect it maybe a couple of inches less wide than the bus.
Question is where are people meant to park? They probably could shave a couple of inches off the pavement but I guess it is too expensive.
Disability - strangely there is a large LDV mercedes van that takes disabled people
somewhere? everyday, it is operated by a private coach firm I guess on a charter, is a 12 seater and has a special lift at the back for wheelchairs. It is smaller than the buses.
My mate was a bus driver but gave up as he got fed up trying to take the huge single decker buses down cornwall's narrow harbour and town roads on roads packed with tourist traffic. (Ever visited St. Ives? you'll know what I mean).
Edited by Saltrampen on 24/10/2008 at 08:32
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It is amazing the difference really, my 'local' bus service runs every 5 minutes and usualy has about 40-80 people on each bus. It is a nightmare but it is a lot less of a nightmare than driving into town and parking etc.
Anyway the reason the buses have got bigger is accesibility, and also the need to standarsise fleets in order to cut training and running costs. If nobody uses these buses then the bus company in question should find out why, Stagecoach Manchester have done very well in convincing more and more drivers onto the buses, as a result bus travel has increase nearly 50% in South Manchester in the past 5 years. Most the buses are less than three years old, they are reliable and fairly comfortable. All my neighbours have cars yet they all get the bus into town, this how it should be.
The smallest buses these days seem to be the Optare Solo's but they are still quite large compared to the old van minibuses you used to get.
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