Have buses a role in urban rapid transit?
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• "We are in business to sell rides to our customers and little enough market research has been carried out by the bus industry. To the manufacturer the customer has been the purchaser of the bus, and it has been assumed, 1 suppose, that the manufacturer
is a good judge of what his customers want. I do not believe that this has always been a
correct assumption and in SELNEC we are just beginning to examine this question in depth."
Mr G. G. Harding, SELNEC PM, Manchester. made the foregoing observation during the course of a paper on
Double-Deck Buses which was one of 12
addresses included in a Symposium on Rapid Transit Vehicles for City Services
sponsored by the Automobile division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and held in London yesterday and today.
After describing the main features of present-day double-deck vehicles and giving some comparisons of doubleand single deck buses, Mr Harding took a look at the future from the points of view of construction, layout, performance, mainten ance, and life. He presented views on various aspects of design and equipment which should, he said, for operational reasons, be incorporated in future SELNEC vehicles.
On the subject of safety, Mr Harding said that SELNEC was seriously studying the effect of having separate entrances and exits and the direction of the staircase. "Our boarding and alighting accidents are three times as high with the open rear-platform bus as compared with the frontentrance /exit bus with a door, but the addition of a separate exit increases the rate
of such accidents beyond that of the open platform bus." Experience to date with a
forward-ascending staircase with a one-door bus indicated that this did not interfere adversely with passenger boarding and alighting, and these promising tests were continuing.
Discussing body layout, Mr Harding said that so many local factors seemed to affect relevant decisions that "even when we have reached conclusions I do not think it wise to suggest that we are right for any
circumstances other than our own, and I feel this must also apply to other operators. If, however, a standard double-deck bus.
was produced as a result of a satisfactory national study of all the relevant
factors—and if such a bus could show advantages in terms of first 'cost, operating costs, reduction of down time, etc—I would find it difficult, if not impossible, to say that
our operational conditions are so different from those of others that I could not accept it."
In amplification of his observation quoted in the opening paragraph, concerning the implication of the manufacturer, Mr Harding went on to say: "If a manufacturer intends to offer a standard integral bus to his customers, perhaps on an almost take-it-or-leave-it basis, he would be wise to realize that he may have to shoulder the responsibility for knowing what the fare-paying passenger wants. As passengers are not standard throughout the country he may find himself very much involved with the question of compromise if he does, in fact, offer a truly standard bus. It is likely to be the case that passengers want comfortable, pleasant and safe surroundings in which to travel. It would be interesting to know how many broken heads and broken ribs would have been avoided over the years if more attention had been paid to the crash situation in connection with the design of seat frames and vertical stanchions adjacent or attached to them."
It was the speaker's impression that very few engineers not directly involved with buses had any conception of the size of the area of bus design, which was virtually unexplored. The industry could offer interesting and rewarding work to engineers seeking to solve its problems.
Regarding the relationship of the double-deck bus to the field of rapid transit, Mr Harding said he was not at all sure that there was a direct relationship.
"The double-deck bus," he concluded, "combines the ability to move large loads while being comparatively economical in the use of road space with the flexibility of operation which all buses possess when compared with fixed-route, reserved-track vehicles. However, what seems to matter to most passengers is not how fast the vehicle travels but how long it takes them to make door-to-door journeys and how rarely they have to change from one vehicle to another to make their journey . .. it is therefore my opinion that the double-deck bus has a substantial life ahead of it, operating in areas where rapid transit offers no advantage, and therefore its role is one which is complementary to rapid transit."
The Leyland National single-deck bus, designed specifically to .meet the future requirements of urban transport, and eelmprehensively described and illustrated in Commercial Motor September 18 1970, was the subject of a paper delivered by Dr A. Fogg, BLMC, who discussed the needs of passengers, drivers, operators and manufacturers and described how the new vehicle had been evolved in order to achieve these.
Among other papers listed for delivery yesterday was one on Guided Buses on Segregated Ways, jointly prepared by Mr H. B. Sedgefield (Sperry Rand Ltd) and Mr A. J. M. Hitchcock (RRL). This dealt with the Throughways System employing a standard single-deck bus fitted with a retractable guidance arm to allow it to operate on special reserved tracks or as a normal road-going vehicle (CM January 16 and 23 1970).
Today's programme includes a paper by Mr S. Haines (London Transport, Chiswick) .on automatic fare collection on buses in London Transport.
Lytham's women drivers
• Lytham St Anne's transport committee is recommending that four conductresses be given permission to take a course for a psv driving licence. Commenting, the transport manager, Mr
• R. C. Armstrong, said: "If they pass the examination they will be considered for driving," adding: "The men seem quite happy about it."
More Ribble o-m-o
• Ribble Motor Company is to bring into service at the Preston depot more one-man buses.
A company spokesman said that the extension of one-man operations was essential if services were to be continued. It was expected that some of the buses would be in operation by the end of May.