Public transport bus service
Public transport bus services are generally based on regular operation of transit buses along a route calling at agreed bus stops according to a published public transport timetable.
History of buses
Origins
While there are indications of experiments with public transport in Paris as early as 1662, there is evidence of a scheduled "bus route" from Market Street in Manchester to Pendleton in Salford UK, started by John Greenwood in 1824.Another claim for the first public transport system for general use originated in Nantes, France, in 1826., a retired army officer who had built public baths using the surplus heat from his flour mill on the city's edge, set up a short route between the center of town and his baths. The service started on the Place du Commerce, outside the hat shop of a M. Omnès, who displayed the motto Omnès Omnibus on his shopfront. When Baudry discovered that passengers were just as interested in getting off at intermediate points as in patronizing his baths, he changed the route's focus. His new voiture omnibus combined the functions of the hired hackney carriage with a stagecoach that travelled a predetermined route from inn to inn, carrying passengers and mail. His omnibus had wooden benches that ran down the sides of the vehicle; passengers entered from the rear.
In 1828, Baudry went to Paris, where he founded a company under the name Entreprise générale des omnibus de Paris, while his son Edmond Baudry founded two similar companies in Bordeaux and in Lyon.
A London newspaper reported on July 4, 1829, that "the new vehicle, called the omnibus, commenced running this morning from Paddington to the City", operated by George Shillibeer.
The first omnibus service in New York began in 1829, when Abraham Brower, an entrepreneur who had organized volunteer fire companies, established a route along Broadway starting at Bowling Green. Other American cities soon followed suit: Philadelphia in 1831, Boston in 1835 and Baltimore in 1844. In most cases, the city governments granted a private company—generally a small stableman already in the livery or freight-hauling business—an exclusive franchise to operate public coaches along a specified route. In return, the company agreed to maintain certain minimum levels of service.
In 1832, the New York omnibus had a rival when the first trams, or streetcars started operation along Bowery, which offered the excellent improvement in amenity of riding on smooth iron rails rather than clattering over granite setts, called "Belgian blocks". The streetcars were financed by John Mason, a wealthy banker, and built by an Irish-American contractor, John Stephenson. The Fifth Avenue Coach Company introduced electric buses to Fifth Avenue in New York in 1898.
In 1831, New Yorker Washington Irving remarked of Britain's Reform Act : "The great reform omnibus moves but slowly." Steam buses emerged in the 1830s as competition to the horse-drawn buses.
The omnibus extended the reach of the emerging cities. The walk from the former village of Paddington to the business heart of London in the City was a long one, even for a young man in good condition. The omnibus thus offered the suburbs more access to the inner city. The omnibus encouraged urbanization. Socially, the omnibus put city-dwellers, even if for only half an hour, into previously-unheard-of physical intimacy with strangers, squeezing them together knee-to-knee. Only the very poor remained excluded. A new division in urban society now came to the fore, dividing those who kept carriages from those who did not. The idea of the "carriage trade", the folk who never set foot in the streets, who had goods brought out from the shops for their appraisal, has its origins in the omnibus crush.
Motorbus
founded the Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company in 1923 and then sold a majority of shares to General Motors in 1925.From the 1920s, General Motors and others started buying up streetcar systems across the United States with a view to replacing them with buses in what became known as the Great American Streetcar Scandal. This was accompanied by a continuing series of technical improvements: pneumatic "balloon" tires during the early 1920s, monocoque body construction in 1931, automatic transmission in 1936, diesel engines in 1936, 50+ passengers in 1948, and air suspension in 1953.
The arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 for not giving up her seat to a white man on a public bus is considered one of the catalysts of the Civil Rights Movement within the United States.
Types of services
The names of different types of bus services vary according to local tradition or marketing, although services can be classified into basic types based on route length, frequency, the purpose of use and type of bus used.Urban transport or regional
- Transit bus is the most common type of public transport bus service and is used to transport large numbers of people in urban areas, or to and from the suburbs to population centres. These buses normally run on fixed routes within an urban area.
- Park and ride bus services are designed to provide an onward passenger journey from a parking lot. These may be branded as shuttle or express services, or part of the standard bus network.
- Share taxi bus services are designed to run as flexible high capacity vehicles usually using minibuses to any point of a person's wish instead of a fixed route. Most common examples of share taxis include public light buses in Hong Kong where the red topped ones act as a share taxi as opposed to green topped ones which are on fixed routes.
- Feeder bus services are designed to pick up passengers in a certain locality and take them to a transfer point where they make an onward journey on a trunk service. This can be another bus, or a rail-based service such as a tram, rapid transit or train. Feeder buses may act as part of a wider local network, or a regional coach network.
- Bus rapid transit is the application of a range of infrastructure and marketing measures to produce public transport bus services that approach the operating characteristics and capacity of rapid transit systems.
Express bus service
Express buses operate on a faster schedule by not making as many stops as normal bus services and often taking quicker routes, such as along freeways, or by using dedicated lanes or roadways. Express buses may also operate out of park and rides, in some cases only during rush hour in the peak direction.
Fares on express bus services may be higher than normal parallel services. Many express buses act as precursors to bus rapid transit lines and employ a proof-of-payment scheme, requiring passengers to purchase tickets before boarding the bus, speeding up the service. These services may also use suburban coaches that feature amenities like comfortable seating and wireless Internet service, particularly on routes that travel long distances at higher speeds without stopping.
In many cases, an express bus service is identified by a letter before or after the regular route number. For example, in Sydney, the letters L, E and X. L indicates that the bus runs along the normal route, while E and X indicate that the bus runs along a more direct route. In New York City, express buses operate using coaches from Motor Coach Industries and Prevost Car, and all except the operate along highways, sometimes for a large portion of the route. For example, the Super Expresses, the all operate on highways for most of their route. Many transit systems may also use a specific number before or after the regular route number. For example, in Toronto, the number "9" goes before the regular route number to display an express bus service.
Long distance transport
Long-distance coach services are bus services operated over long distances between cities. These services can form the mainstay of the travel network in countries with poor railway infrastructure. Different coach operators may band together on a franchise or connecting basis to offer a branded network that covers large distances, such as Trailways and National Express. These networks can even operate internationally, such as Eurolines of Europe. Interurban bus services are primarily aimed at linking together one or more urban centres, and as such are often run as express services while travelling in the intermediate rural areas, or even only call at two terminal points as a long distance shuttle service. Some interurban services may be operated as high specification luxury services, using coaches, in order to compete with railways, or link areas not rail connected. Interurban services may often terminate in central bus stations rather than on street stops. Other interurban services may specifically call at intermediate villages and may use slower transit buses or dual purpose buses.Specialist services
- School buses transport children to and from school. While many countries and school districts organise their own services, as school buses or charter buses, in some areas school bus services are implemented as special journeys on the normal public timetable, specially timed and routed to arrive and depart in coordination with the school bell. Only the latter is commonly referred to as "public transport".
- Shuttle buses are any type of bus service intended primarily to shuttle passengers between two fixed points. These can be bus or coach operated, but are usually short or medium distance journeys taking less than an hour. Shuttle buses will usually link with other transport hubs, such as airport shuttle buses. A common use of a shuttle bus is in towns or cities with multiple terminal train stations or bus stations, for passenger interconnections. "Shuttle" as a brand name is applied variously across several types of service.
- Post bus services are services that also carry mail, often on rural routes.
- Rail replacement bus services are often chartered by railway companies as alternate means of transport for rail passengers. This can be pre-planned to cover for scheduled track maintenance or other planned closures, or to cover for unplanned closures such as derailments.