Use of Back Door on Buses

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
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simonl
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by simonl »

booma wrote:There is supposed to be all door loading at Carrington st Wynyard from nov 26th.

Stands A B C & D.
Supervised PM rear door loading or generalised rear door loading?
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Swift
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

simonl wrote: Supervised PM rear door loading or generalised rear door loading?
Take a stab in the dark!
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simonl
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by simonl »

^ I'd have thought supervised PM peak rear door loading would already be in place!
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

simonl wrote:^ I'd have thought supervised PM peak rear door loading would already be in place!
They trialled it in other locations but not there, where it was sorely needed. Glad to see them trying something different there finally. 36 years is a long time.
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Qantas94Heavy
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Qantas94Heavy »

Got on a bus at Carrington Street Stand A during PM peak today. All door boarding was in effect but dwell time still wasn't great -- 1:35 to load roughly 60-62 people onto a bus.

Most people were using the rear door, with only a few people using the front door after marshals asked them to.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

The idea is distribution, not to switch doors! Public!!
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tonyp
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Qantas94Heavy wrote:Got on a bus at Carrington Street Stand A during PM peak today. All door boarding was in effect but dwell time still wasn't great -- 1:35 to load roughly 60-62 people onto a bus.

Most people were using the rear door, with only a few people using the front door after marshals asked them to.
They're biasing towards the centre door because that has best and quickest access to the bulk of the passenger space (and seats). The general pattern you will observe in Europe is that most will use centre and rear doors for passenger exchange and the front door is pretty quiet.

Here's another example of other-door bias in this "ATDB training video" from our Mr OCB! This is exchange of about 40 people (on and off) in 40 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-3ydX_GIkY

In spite of the centre-door bias though, this is infinitely better at, not only boarding them, but distributing the load through the bus and avoiding the choking-up of the front half of the bus and thus its incomplete loading that you get with front-door loading.

With high-turnover work or with crowds like 60 or so exchanging all at once, the need for more doors also kicks in and you need a vehicle like this:
Optare 3 door.jpg
Optare 3 door.jpg (250.6 KiB) Viewed 8295 times
or even better, this:
public-transport-bus-jihlava-czech-republic-egaxg8.jpg
public-transport-bus-jihlava-czech-republic-egaxg8.jpg (96.83 KiB) Viewed 8295 times
Glen
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Glen »

Meanwhile in another state, far far away:

https://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/Announ ... Bahn-buses
tonyp
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Glen wrote:Meanwhile in another state, far far away:

https://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/Announ ... Bahn-buses
Image
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

tonyp wrote:
or even better, this:
public-transport-bus-jihlava-czech-republic-egaxg8.jpg
I don't think a squashed up drive train like that would cope well with Sydney's combination of hilly terrain and hotter weather.

Adelaide has always been ahead of the game compared to Sydney with the operation of their buses. It helps that it it's a much more compact provincial city that is more manageable with a political climate far more amenable to new ideas.
Adelaide has had to be innovative as their bus system has been their mainstay of public transport for decades.
Just compare their extra wide underfloor buses from the 1950s to Sydney's versions.
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tonyp
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Swift wrote:
tonyp wrote:
or even better, this:
public-transport-bus-jihlava-czech-republic-egaxg8.jpg
I don't think a squashed up drive train like that would cope well with Sydney's combination of hilly terrain and hotter weather.
If you look at the roof of that bus, you will see that the drive-train is most definitely not squashed up!

Image

But even if it was fuel-engined, as you know for example riding the B Line, compact vertical rear engines are common nowadays. ;)
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Swift
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

Here is a stop gap for better egress.
Attachments
Creamliner.jpg
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tonyp
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

Already available - at least in LHD.
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Swift
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

I only applied colour and a decal + flipped the image. I did not add or remove any doors.
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tonyp
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

After a little more reflection on particular cases over time, I've reached the conclusion that there needs to be a more sophisticated formula for calculating capacity in a train, tram or bus. Per meterage on floor area (taking into account axle load of course) is good in theory but it has to be modified for reality according to the number and distribution of doors (and whether all those doors are used for both loading and exit or not). You can jam 100 people on an Australian 12 metre bus or 1,700 on a Sydney double deck train for example if everybody is just being transported from A to B (e.g. a sporting event) and nobody wants to get on and off along the way. As soon as you get passenger turnover, the reality changes dramatically according to the numbers vs the door situation - unless operators are prepared to tolerate stop dwells that stretch to infinity.

As these vehicles in Europe demonstrate with their significantly higher capacity, a train with a flat floor and 3 or 4 doors per car is going to have a higher practical capacity than an equivalent-length one with 2 doors and a double deck; a tram with 2 doors per module is going to do better than one with one door per module; a 12 metre bus with 3 to 4 doors is going to be better on practical capacity than one with 2 doors (let alone 1 door!) and so on. It seems to me that there needs to be some sort of passengers-per-door per rate of turnover (passenger exchange) calculation factored in as well as the traditional floor area/seating calculation.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

They need to put in a fifth door on the off side for the driver to access his hermetically sealed compartment with sound proofing so they don't have to hear abuse and silly unnecessary queries from passengers. Make it two way mirror screen so passengers can't see the driver either!!
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matthewg
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by matthewg »

Swift wrote:They need to put in a fifth door on the off side for the driver to access his hermetically sealed compartment with sound proofing so they don't have to hear abuse and silly unnecessary queries from passengers. Make it two way mirror screen so passengers can't see the driver either!!
That would make it easy to introduce full automation, as the passengers no longer being able to see the driver up front, won't know if the human has been replaced by a machine or not :-)
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by moa999 »

Saw a driver go absolutely mental at an Asian pax with seemingly limited English (possibly tourist) who dived in the centre door of an M20 artic.

One thing I noted is that if the doors are open - there is absolutely nothing on the side of the doors, or steps etc to say No Entry.
The only visible no entry sticker is on the outside of the doors which is only visible when closed, when you open the doors it's hidden.

It's time to ditch this archaic practice at all stops.
Nugget
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Nugget »

moa999 wrote:Saw a driver go absolutely mental at an Asian pax with seemingly limited English (possibly tourist) who dived in the centre door of an M20 artic.

One thing I noted is that if the doors are open - there is absolutely nothing on the side of the doors, or steps etc to say No Entry.
The only visible no entry sticker is on the outside of the doors which is only visible when closed, when you open the doors it's hidden.

It's time to ditch this archaic practice at all stops.
Also there was a time when the Metrobus was all door boarding with prepay only etc. Given there is now Opal, prepay only and readers at every door there is no possible sane reason why all door boarding should not be allowed.
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by Swift »

Nugget wrote:
Also there was a time when the Metrobus was all door boarding with prepay only etc. Given there is now Opal, prepay only and readers at every door there is no possible sane reason why all door boarding should not be allowed.
Safe -tee according to the union. Forget fool proof interlocks, making it impossible to drag a passenger off down the road by their leg, and cameras pointed to the doors. The wing mirror also. honestly, Sydney's developing culture of over caution is suffocating.
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simonl
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by simonl »

Nugget wrote:Also there was a time when the Metrobus was all door boarding with prepay only etc.
I'm sure that part is incorrect. Only the 891 had such an arrangement.
tonyp
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

I would have thought that no STA service would ever have had unsupervised (that is, without attendants on the footpath) all-door loading.

Admin: the word “attendants” substituted
molybtek
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by molybtek »

I've used public transport for the first time after the timetable change - was surprised how busy Parramatta bus interchange was in the evening peak. They even had a bus marshal there who asked the bus driver to open the back door for boarding.

The service I got on was a T64, is the use of back door boarding at Parramatta a regular occurrence now?
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!

Post by Tonymercury »

tonyp wrote:I would have thought that no STA service would ever have had unsupervised (that is, without attendants on the footpath) all-door loading.
I had an 'uneducated' operator do it at Mascot shops yesterday
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Re: Use of Back Door on Buses

Post by tonyp »

1. Sydney STA bus deals with huge railway crowd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foSHdU7ZqF8

2. Toronto bus deals with huge railway crowd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPtwbpByPds

1. Could be a still-life painting, crowd doesn't move, just one door that keeps opening and shutting then stays shut after a handfull board, plenty of room inside.

2. Likewise not the best sort of vehicle for the job capacity-wise, but at least everything is moving and filling through every available opening.
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