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Nine standard bus layouts?
Page 47
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from a special correspondent • Outline specifications for no fewer than nine standard bus types have been drawn up by the Ministry of Transport, it is understood. These designs—and perhaps others— will eventually be the ones to attract the 25 per cent grant conferred by the Transport Bill's proposals. In the meantime, most existing "modern" bus designs are likely to attract the grant when the legislation is enacted.
The nine layouts—which specify entrance, exit, window and seating layout as well as general mechanical configuration and engine position—are all for vehicles over 30ft long, both singleand double-deck.
The Ministry's proposed designs are an amalgam of operators' requirements and the department's own ideas and in some cases are quite detailed—though not, for example, to the extent of specifying such things as type of seat grab-rail or the spacing of stanchions. But the Ministry is keen to "buy" considerable influence in bus design— aimed both at modernizing and standardizing—in return for the 25 per cent "stake".
Operators are now asking whether smaller buses—even down to 12-seaters based on very standard van conversions—will qualify for a grant. And although some operators, and understandably the manufacturing industry, strongly support the "standard bus" idea, some are adamantly opposed to it.
These opponents include some of the big operators, State concerns among them. They feel that while purchase price and parts replacement costs may be kept down, running costs of a bus built to suit national compromise rather than specific local conditions could well be higher.