Use of Back Door on Buses

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Mr OC Benz
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Mr OC Benz »

That is basically how Transperth (branch from the Public Transport Authority) works. They are one massive network which controls what happens with the trains, buses and ferries, they contract the services out and every operator has to meet the same requirements and standardisation that the PTA has set out. All the vehicles are owned by the PTA and they are leased out under the contract. It definitely keeps thing consistent across the network and makes it much easier and simpler for customers to understand. Basically the only way you can tell the difference of what operator the bus belongs to is by the operator logo that appears on every driver's name badge, or a small sign on the side of the bus saying the operator. But to all the passengers, they only know of Transperth and that is the colours represented on everything in Perth and that is all they need to know or care about when it comes to their local bus or train service. Even queries such lost property or complaints have to be funnelled through the Transperth Call Centre before being redirected to the appropriate place.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Bus_fellow »

That is the point of the Hop logo and establishment of TfNSW as well - to centralise control over almost everything in one organisation for the whole network, with contracted operators pretty much responsible for just employing staff and actually running the services. However, in NSW, it's still a work in progress.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Bus_fellow »

Glen wrote:
Bus_fellow wrote:Clearly there are big advantages to using the back doors for boarding, but how would you get people to actually tap on when they get on at the back? There would be a huge risk of increasing fare evasion with boarding at all doors, because it would be so much easier to get on a bus without paying (especially on busy routes where this would give the biggest operational advantages).
Don't just think mode think transport.

How will people tag-on on trams?

(Answer: not by boarding at the front door I can tell you).
Trams are a different situation, though. On buses, you can get away with front-door boarding only, most of the time (though on particular corridors it clearly causes problems). However, since the new trams will be carrying up to three times as many people as the largest route buses (and more like five times that of most of the fleet), and since dwell times are going to relatively a lot more important for getting the most out of those lines than with buses, it isn't feasible to adopt front-door boarding only for trams. It also isn't the current practice for existing trams, which currently have conductors (but I would assume will ultimately not once Opal is in place).

Different modes are inherently different, and while trams are closer to buses than trains, in this respect they are probably a lot more like heavy rail. My bet would be on Opal readers on trams being installed at stations, rather than on vehicles, to avoid delays from people tapping on/off on the vehicle at large stops (which with the expected demand for the CSELR from day 1 would be a problem, would be a problem, even with multiple readers at each door).
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Sydneyrail2014 »

Opal on light rail will be calculated the same as bus, so I'm positive this will be like melbourne and have readers on board trams. During the IWLR extension there has been no indication or signs that opal poles will be installed at light rail stops.

An example of encouraging customers to use back doors has been implemented by Translink http://translink.com.au/travel-informat ... se-the-bus (under travelling on the bus)
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by 08 XDi »

^ And promptly defeated by them still permitting operators to buy buses with only a front door (although this appears to be changing for all the larger players).

For CSELR, I cannot imagine why you would want or need to have on-board validation. Just put Opal poles on the platforms, like the static go card readers at the Gold Coast light rail platforms. (The Gold Coast ones may not have enough readers actually on the platform from what I have seen, but that is easier to fix later than screwing up the whole operating model with clogged doors.)
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Sydneyrail2014 »

08 XDi wrote:^ And promptly defeated by them still permitting operators to buy buses with only a front door (although this appears to be changing for all the larger players).

For CSELR, I cannot imagine why you would want or need to have on-board validation. Just put Opal poles on the platforms, like the static go card readers at the Gold Coast light rail platforms. (The Gold Coast ones may not have enough readers actually on the platform from what I have seen, but that is easier to fix later than screwing up the whole operating model with clogged doors.)
Operators should put on centre double doors on all buses at the very least along with front double doors.

Well if Gold Coast has it on platforms, then Sydney very well might. Sydney's light rail is much like Gold coast's light rail. Where as Melbournes system is more like a streetcar/tram system.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by 1whoknows »

As of today tss has issued an instruction to drivers that rear doors are to be used and that any previous practices from former operators are now null and void.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Sydneyrail2014 »

Yes I got that response too, from Transit Systems, apparently a large number of customers are complaining about rear doors not opening on services, and they are attempting to ensure that the buses fitted with double center doors are being utilized first, then single center doors then other buses however not sure if the depot managers actually follow this though
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Bus_fellow »

Sydneyrail2014 wrote:Opal on light rail will be calculated the same as bus
Do you have a source for this? I'm not aware of any announcement about light rail fares for Opal, although there was recently an announcement of some minor fare changes for the existing tickets from when the IWLR extension starts operating?
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Fleet Lists »

This has been a rumour for some time now but as far as I am aware no official announcement has been made. But even if that is so, it does not mean that tap/on tap/off needs to be done on the trams themselves - they are two separate issues.
The rumour was acually that transfers between trams and buses would be treated as travelling on the same mode of transport but not necessarily that the same fare would be charged on each.
But is really off topic as far as this thread is concerned and should be part of the Opal thread.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by iDionz »

busways use both front and back but if your the only one getting off you generally go out front, if theres a group say 4 or more the bus driver usually opens the back door usually always at macarthur square, campbelltown station, narellan town centre and camden (john street) because their the major bus stops and where usually abit of people get off there
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Tallewang »

After a short while he turned and asked me, rather shocked: "your buses only have two doors?"
It's your friend who seems like the naive and insular one, there are very few buses ( other than large articulated buses ) in the world with more than two doors.
Last edited by Tallewang on Thu Feb 20, 2014 1:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Tallewang »

Trams and buses are quite different scenarios.

I don't support "all door boarding" for buses. I don't see a need for it. In through the front, and out through the back, should be the standard "normal" behaviour. Where there is a flow of people handling steps, kerbs, puddles and ticket machines , you don't want to be conflicting with people barging the other way. It also reduces the number of people trying to climb over each other in the aisle of the bus. Allowing back-door boarding makes fare evasion easier. And the number of practical scenarios in which it would actually "speed things up" seems to be quite limited.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Doesn't look like you've been to Europe Tallewang.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by ajw373 »

Sydneyrail2014 wrote:It's not about fare evasion. If it was about fare evasion, they would have allowed passengers to board the bus using back doors on free shuttles.

It's about lack of consistent operating procedures with different operators. I think brand should be one "Sydney buses", and this brand should be franchised out to multiple operators. Eg, hillsbus, Transdev, STA, etc. this way operating procedures, branding are kept consistent
In theory that is what should be happening now, though will take time.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Mr OC Benz »

Tallewang wrote:
After a short while he turned and asked me, rather shocked: "your buses only have two doors?"
It's your friend who seems like the naive and insular one, there are very few buses ( other than large articulated buses ) in the world with more than two doors.
Spain, Italy, parts of France and Germany, Austria, all of Eastern Europe, even the intercity buses in Sweden, Finland etc, Marcopolo built buses in South America etc are mostly 3 doors (in parts of Italy and Czech Republic, some Rigids even have 4 doors!). I'm sure there's more, but that's just a starter...
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Mr OC Benz wrote:
Tallewang wrote:
It's your friend who seems like the naive and insular one, there are very few buses ( other than large articulated buses ) in the world with more than two doors.
Spain, Italy, parts of France and Germany, Austria, all of Eastern Europe, even the intercity buses in Sweden, Finland etc, Marcopolo built buses in South America etc are mostly 3 doors (in parts of Italy and Czech Republic, some Rigids even have 4 doors!). I'm sure there's more, but that's just a starter...
Plus my naive mate used to work for one of the major European bus manufacturers - but yeah it's possible he didn't know. :roll:
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Tallewang »

Mr OC Benz wrote:
Tallewang wrote: After a short while he turned and asked me, rather shocked: "your buses only have two doors?"

It's your friend who seems like the naive and insular one, there are very few buses ( other than large articulated buses ) in the world with more than two doors.
Spain, Italy, parts of France and Germany, Austria, all of Eastern Europe, even the intercity buses in Sweden, Finland etc, Marcopolo built buses in South America etc are mostly 3 doors (in parts of Italy and Czech Republic, some Rigids even have 4 doors!). I'm sure there's more, but that's just a starter...
Again with all the euros. Are you Jan Gehl ?

How many buses have you seen with more than 2 doors in England ? In China ? In the USA ? You can google buses in those places you mention, there seems to be a lot of them with 2 doors.

Can you actual post a link to a photo of a Swedish intercity bus with more than 2 doors ? None of the first 50 I found with google had 3 doors. Not one.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Tallewang »

Try google "scania three door bus". In the first 110 photos, there were 5 photos of buses with three doors.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Mr OC Benz »

If you insist... I have added a couple of extras from my own collection too.

Sweden (a number of Volvo intercity buses in Sweden and Finland have 3 doors, including the latest Euro VI Volvo 8900LE B8RLE)
Image

Brasov
Image

London
Image

Berlin
Image

Turkey
Image

Beijing
See here: http://abhevobus.0fees.net/evobus/benz/ ... index.html

Hong Kong
Image

Chile
Image

I don't take much of an interest in US buses to be able to know where to get proof of 3 door bus operation. As far as I'm concerned, they are in a different world of bus designs to the rest of us anyway. The reason why a lot of LHD cities don't have 3 door rigids is because no chassis manufacturer has ever designed one to enable 3 doors on a RHD bus. The reason the UK doesn't have many 3 door buses (apart from the reason I listed above) is that they seem to barely allow 2 door buses! Outside of London and everything is virtually single door only, so once they can get over that hurdle, maybe they'll think forward a bit more.

The reason why a lot of European (and other countries) use 3 door buses is simply to allow shorter dwell times at bus stops as passengers are able to get on/off quicker, which then improves reliability of the service which then means it is able to keep moving through heavy traffic without having to excessively wait at bus stops for passengers to board/alight and avoids bunching (Go to London and you'll see what I mean). I don't believe 3 door buses are suitable everywhere, but just as an example, some of the Metrobus routes in Sydney and other busy routes with closely spaced stops, a high frequency and where the majority of people only travel a short distance (reduces the need for as many seats) would benefit from 3 door 12metre buses (or 4 door 18m buses). The Perth CAT network would benefit from 3 door 10.5m midi buses as another example because there is a constant turnover of pax at every bus stop in the city, most people only travel a short distance, the excessively high frequency means it is important to keep buses moving and because there is not really a big need for seats, comfort would not be too varied for most pax (who would be willing to stand for short distances anyway).
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Tallewang wrote:
Again with all the euros.
Outside the hallowed halls of Australian transport authorities (and the local bus industry), it's common for those seeking to improve the performance of PT to look at exemplar systems with best-practice, producing best results. That usually involves moving outside the Anglosphere - and Europe offers a particular source of excellent examples. Ignoring the USA is no loss. Their systems are pretty archaic and don't perform very well. That is, they don't win too many people to PT. So what's the point of citing examples of bad practice?

Multiple doors (with multiple entry) are necessary on buses in busy inner urban areas. By resisting them, local transport authorities and the bus industry are simply shooting themselves in the foot and laying out a red carpet for the return of trams that can do the job properly. I'm old enough to remember catching trams and the changeover to buses in Sydney and what a collapse into dysfunction it was - and has remained ever since. Many countries in Europe and elsewhere have, however, reviewed their thinking on bus operation and design (taking the cue from trams) and have produced some very efficient and productive bus operations. In most of Australia, we remain lodged in a time bubble at about the year 1950 AD.

But by all means, lets continue those highly-productive "study tours" to the UK and USA hey.

Mr OC Benz, regarding the 100% low aisle multi-door buses and right-hand drive, you say that conversion is an issue for Australia. But isn't the Citelis bus in Perth converted to RHD? Or did they avoid relocating the shaft tunnel at the rear by not being required to have a rear door?

As far as I can see, switching over the driver's position and the shaft tunnel to the other side are the only significant changes needed to provide these buses to the Australian market.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Mr OC Benz »

Converting/switching the actual cab to RHD appears to be a lot simpler than doing the same with mechanical components, because the chassis design in some ways stems a few decades back. When places like the UK or Singapore order European buses such as the Citaros, they only convert the cab layout (although I believe the chassis would already be built to the country's requirement) not the rear mechanical components.

The Citelis was only available in LHD format, so it was imported to Australia and then converted before being built on. Of course if you could convert the cab to the opposite side, nothing else would matter from there on and so the rest of the chassis would've been left virtually untouched. Because no cities using RHD buses have yet to require (or perhaps discover?) 3 door 12 metre buses, no European manufacturers have bothered to invest extensively in changing the chassis layout to support this. Probably the fact that all Australian cities are using bus chassis designed for intercity work (thus only Low Entry - low floor to the rear axle) does not help. Perhaps moving from Low Entry to Low Floor buses on our inner city networks would be the first step before you can even consider more doors! Steps or obstacles as they more or less are only adding to the issues that surround the use of these buses and their limitations in a city environment. The buses used around Australia at the moment are more suited to runs of longer journey times, fewer stops and where seating is more desired (e.g. An L90 to Palm Beach or a bus to Rouse Hill) as oppose to the inner city busy routes that are lot of them run (e.g. 333 to Bondi, KIngsford, Victoria Rd etc).

The Citelis* is an interesting vehicle though. Unlike most other manufacturers, most components are isolated at the very rear allowing more flexibility inside for seating/capacity. Whereas other European manufacturers opted for vertical cabinets placed on the offside or nearside. Both can work however I suspect if these components had to be re-arranged or moved to accommodate another door for RHD buses, it would be a lot of work. The IVECO, HeuliezBus and BredaMenarinibus products would probably be the easiest to work from as they all have a similar engine set up and would be easier to accommodate an extra door than say on a MB Citaro or MAN where you would have to reposition the engine and transmission among other things. Scania is/was a bit different because the gearbox was generally positioned on the opposite side to the engine.

*The Citelis has since been replaced by the new IVECO Bus UrbanWay (which is of a similar concept).

I guess the moral of the story is that if anyone really wanted to have three door standard buses for busy inner city operations and were able to or would purchase a large order of buses, I'm sure it would be enough to influence a manufacturer to build what the customer wants. In most European cities, buses and trams/light rail are treated similarly, or rather I suppose buses look up to their role model which is trams/light rail and they look to try and achieve a similar efficiency with buses as they can with trams (pity they can't see that here).

Europe by far demonstrates the best practise for bus operations and public transport networks as well as the technology and design put into the buses themselves. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to take advice from other systems which actually work well!
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Mr OC Benz wrote: *The Citelis has since been replaced by the new IVECO Bus UrbanWay (which is of a similar concept).
This:
http://www.ivanbasso.com/img/Ivan_Basso ... nway08.jpg

Solaris does something similar but puts the engine offside at the rear:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... islava.JPG

Both approaches also offer noise attenuation compared to underfloor engines that radiate noise off the road. It seems to me that the IVECO would be easiest to convert as it requires only the driveshaft (including gearbox - I'm not sure?) to be relocated from the left side to the right side.
Mr OC Benz wrote:In most European cities, buses and trams/light rail are treated similarly, or rather I suppose buses look up to their role model which is trams/light rail and they look to try and achieve a similar efficiency with buses as they can with trams (pity they can't see that here).

Europe by far demonstrates the best practise for bus operations and public transport networks as well as the technology and design put into the buses themselves. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to take advice from other systems which actually work well!
Apparently you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

The funniest thing is that the "tram vs buses" mentality here (as opposed to the European attitude that they are complementary modes that have different roles and capacities) produces "bus lobbyists" who argue against trams while offering as an alternative only inefficient, poorly-designed buses using an outdated concept half a century old. I shouldn't give them weapons, but if they could offer buses like the one you pictured on the first page of this thread they might have half a chance of mounting a case - though they can never match the capacity, which is why you choose a tram.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Mr OC Benz »

Solaris basically do the same as Mercedes-Benz, SOR City and Volvo. The IVECO I think only requires the moving of the driveshaft, I'm pretty sure the gearbox is confined to the one compartment too, although possibly a little off-centred.

Here's an example of the typical Citelis/UrbanWay layout.
image.jpg
image.jpg (52.25 KiB) Viewed 8841 times
And Volvo B9L layout.
image.jpg
image.jpg (67.25 KiB) Viewed 8841 times
Probably the other important thing we need to do on top of switching from LE to LF buses is also moving the wheelchair ramp back to the centre door which is the ideal location which provides easy accessibility and manouverability giving independence to wheelchair users unlike the current front door set up.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Thanks for those excellent plans Mr OC :wink:

IVECO does a neater job imho. Not sure if the engine would have to be reversed or whether the gearbox would have to be repositioned.

The centre door is the most popular entrance in Europe and is a breeze for wheelchairs and baby buggies, as they go straight into the big space opposite the door, avoiding that awkward, narrow turn inside the front door.

These photos show the benefit of that central space, the 100% low aisle and you can see the driveshaft tunnel on the offside at the rear (although the first two photos are a hybrid trolleybus, so not sure what they still need the tunnel for).

Image

Image

Image

Single leaf doors are another stupidity on local-build buses in Australia. That needs to change.
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