Why American Buses Are Just Worse

buses have a really bad rep in North America less so in Canada but it's still a thing and I don't like it now of course there are a lot of reasons for this but one of the biggest reasons and one that I think gets discussed far too little is that the buses here in Canada and the United States are just worse than our International counterparts but why and and could we 'd fix this [Music] if you like videos about how soft the seats on buses are you should subscribe and hit the Bell icon so you don't miss any future videos like my upcoming series on places that should have rapid transit but don't when a friend from Europe came to visit Toronto recently we took a ride naturally on one of Toronto's newest and nicest buses it was a hybrid delivered just a few years ago and to be honest they were amazed why is the ride so rough the bus is rattling so much is it going to fall apart why do the wayfinding screens look like they were designed in the 1970s oh my goodness the seats are so hard I must say the comments startled me a little but it did remind me of when I first moved to Toronto where the buses felt notably less nice and rougher than those I was used to in Vancouver but Vancouver isn't bus Heaven if you want to truly see what buses can do a trip to Europe Latin America or Asia makes a ton of sense oh and I should probably also say I'm likely going to say North America in this video at some point but in this case sorry Mexico so you don't count your buses are too good now a big part of why I think transit buses are probably so much better in much of the rest of the world is that there are just so many more Brands competing for example man vdl Volvo Hess Scania and indeed even Mercedes yes all of these years you could have been riding on a Mercedes-Benz sitaro bus now you know from these many Brands you'll see a ton of cool features but what I'd actually argue you see the most of is a diversity of different buses currently in North America bus manufacturers seem to be trying to Pare down their offering in fact Vancouver recently ordered Nova bus Suburban models which are just city buses with one less door and bad seats meant to be used on routes where coach buses are the correct answer by comparison in the rest of the world you've got everything under the sun you have the usual two axle city buses and articulated buses but you also have longer 14 and 15 meter buses with three axles more capacity than a regular city bus but less than an articulated there are also four axle articulated bus variants oh and you can also see by articulated buses in Europe and Latin America with not just one but two bendy bits in fact some models even look like trams which is all the more recently autonomous bus Rapid Transit Gadget bond from China is not a big deal meanwhile despite the US and Canada having more Road space than almost any other countries in the world there is not a single double bendy boy to be found here it's also common in the rest of the world to see buses with more doors I talk a lot about this with trains but it still holds true with buses more doors mean people can get on and off of a vehicle more quickly which makes your route faster and more pleasant but in the US and Canada 99.9 percent of regular city buses have two doors and 99.9 percent of articulated buses have three but surprising as it might be that's not the case everywhere in the rest of the world 12 meter city buses with a third door behind the rear wheel are actually really common and the same is true of articulated buses with four doors again with one behind the rear wheel as it turns out there are even some articulated bus variants with two middle doors meaning they have five doors in total which is just crazy at the same time while Transit planners and enthusiasts in North America gush over the idea of 100 low floor trams or light rail Vehicles we still order 70 low floor buses even though 100 low floor buses are common in other parts of the world if you're wondering how that works this picture should help electric buses are of course also much more common well you can count the number of major trolley bus systems in North America on one hand they're all over the place in Europe and even in cities that don't currently have trolleys new systems are being set up and in the meantime battery electric buses are being ordered in fact Amsterdam schipper airport has over 200 electric buses just for the airport more than most major transit systems in North America just for the airport in fact in most of the world buses have been getting electrified for a lot longer than here in North America and by all kinds of different means and of course many of these cool features get combined to create incredible high-capacity buses that could serve all kinds of purposes that we couldn't even imagine in North America by articulated electric trolley bus yes hello Switzerland and for what it's worth the experience on board buses in Europe and frankly most of the world is also just better seats with more padding better layouts and higher quality materials are are all common the wayfinding tends to be better and the ride quality also tends to be a lot better the first pretty average looking London bus which I took on my trip to London last year on the last day of my trip to London actually put me to sleep almost immediately it was glorious so why is it like this well everyone's favorite thing policies and regulation in the US there are buy America and similar rules which means that federal dollars are not going to any European buses and unfortunately in this case similar rules actually also do exist in Canada at the same time super dated safety regulations also pretty obviously have an impact I actually think it's worth addressing the idea that North American regulations are somehow safer because this frequently comes up in transit Enthusiast communities but it's just not the case usually the definition of safety used in North America is highly specific and highly pedantic and while we might score very well for our definition of safety when you actually look at safety from a perspective the average person would agree makes sense it's kind of a watch as far as I can tell at the same time for a long time there appeared to be little questioning as to whether regulations in North America that did things like force trains to be twice as heavy as in Europe and the rest of the world we're having a positive or negative impact on the transit experience a nice parallel to kind of get what I'm talking about are automobile regulations part of the reason that trucks and SUVs are so much more common in North America is that our safer regulations don't take into account the safety of people outside of the car so as long as everything inside your enormous truck mostly stays in one piece no matter what you slam into you're good at the end of the day most of the world moves far more people on public transportation than us especially on things like buses and so I think we can accept that maybe the rest of the world knows how to keep people safe now at the same time the archaic rules and regulations of the North American bus market mean that we have only really two major players novabus and new flyer these two companies do admittedly produce better buses than most of the other remaining manufacturers in North America but that isn't saying a ton and both of these companies are actually based in Canada where shocker there's a lot less negative stereotyping around bus use now as I mentioned there are smaller players in the North American bus market like proterra and byd who produce electric buses but their buses seem to be of sort of questionable quality at least based on results in Toronto there is also gillig who only sells buses into the U.S market but they also still sell buses that look like this now to be completely Fair most manufacturers do have models which look better and Nova bus in particular does produce some pretty decent looking models probably influenced by their parent company Volvo but even our best buses here in North America would probably look pretty meh on average in Europe it just seems to be the case that in the rest of the world there are more buses to pick from and so Europe and Asia and Latin America and Australia and other places around the world see more competition and better buses Australia in particular is a pretty great example they tend to buy their buses from overseas companies and their buses are a lot nicer than the average one scene in North America in fact Brisbane is actually even getting beautiful new electric bi-articulated buses for its Metro project to give some credit to North American Transit agencies some of them have actually tried to import European buses Viva in York Region for example has ordered van Hool buses straight from Belgium and they're great they're nicer than the buses that aren't from Belgium and as it turns out AC transit in the Bay Area ordered a ton of Van hole buses throughout the 2000s but in recent years they've fallen in line and now they purchase standard North American buses now you might wonder about prices I certainly did and I sort of expected that buses that were nicer would cost at least a little bit more but it doesn't even seem conclusive that that's the case I'm guessing that because in the rest of the world there are just so many companies competing for bus orders prices are still similar if not lower because again more competition drives down prices and probably gives you better buses too an interesting situation happened with Alexander Dennis for example famous for their double decker buses in the UK years ago they started selling the Enviro 500 model in North America and they've been wildly successful so they actually ended up starting up a local production facility to produce buses and sell them directly into the North American market and now they've actually been bought out by Canadian manufacturer new flyer which I can only hope will lead to New Flyer getting some influences from Alexander Dennis now what's so frustrating about all this is that the actual Drive trains used on most North American buses are the exact same as the ones that would be used in other parts of the world typically built by third-party companies so the buses actually operate much as they would in other parts of the world simply with a less nice rattly bus shell around them the idea that a bus will be adequate as long as it has the required number of seats fuel economy and keeps running for the required number of years is exactly why we have so many problems with public transit in North America to say that user experience has taken the back seat would be an understatement this approach gives Transit agencies less flexibility costs them more and creates a worse experience for passengers as well as probably operators so maybe the answer to better buses in North America is to just do what the rest of the world does thanks for watching foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 545,982

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, bus, transit bus

Id: U3qeYRI34C8

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Robo1p]

Also, other countries tend to have the wheelchair door be the middle/rear door, rather than the front. This allows wheelchair users to travel without being strapped in (facing backwards though).

[u/Dadbert97]

The problem is both much simpler and much more complicated than this. As long as transit continues to be regarded as the mode of last resort for the underprivileged and downtrodden, who are seen as undeserving of anything better, the quality of the buses themselves and the service they provide will not improve.

[u/boopis280]

We got some little Alexander dennises here in omaha and while they don't have 5 doors or anything crazy like that, the seats make the bus feel like a rolls royce compared to the north American dog shit we normally get. I don't think AD has a huge presence in the US market but I really hope they're successful and grow, it's the one monopoly I wouldn't mind seeing here.

[u/DarkMetroid567]

I'm going to be honest and say that my time on buses did not feel significantly better in Europe than it does in America. I recognized all of things Reese talked about but it never seemed to be a major factor

[u/fatbob42]

Having buses at the airport at all is more common in Europe than the US.

[u/TheOriginalKyotoKid]

..there is one manufacturer in the States Gillig in California Portland OR TriMet's entire fleet is made by GIllig save for a handful of D40LFs by New FLyer ( in the process of being phased out) and the new the BRT bendys which are made by Nvva Bus of Canada. In the 1980s and 90s the agency operated a fleet of Crown-Ikarius bendies from Hungary, but they were underpowered (Portland has a lot of hills) and had all sorts of mechanical issues, thus reliability was poor. This one experience soured the agency on bendies and foreign made buses in general.

Milwaukee COunty Transit System (Wisconsin) operated a fairly sizeable fleet of 30'', 40' and 60' bendy buses built by Neoplan in Germany back in the 1980s and 90s before succumbing to the "Buy American/Canadian" rule.

I've seen Van Hool buses where I live but they are usually the type for intercity travel. there is also an intercity bus line in Wisconsin that runs between Milwaukee and Madison which operates Van Hool double deck buses, but they area privately run system and thus not bound by the "Buy American" mandate.

I have friends who travel to Mexico a couple times a year and they have mentioned how nice the buses (both transit and intercity) are there compared to the States. As with rail travel, the States is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to urban transit as well.

[u/kallefranson]

But what exactly are those harmful American regulations he is talking about?