Will the fuel crisis change bus design?
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by Martin Watkins
HOW WILL the energy crisis affect public transport?
Will buses in the future be made more spartan in order to conserve energy, or will they be made more attractive to promote bus use ? Many speakers in discussion at UITP Congress at Nice criticised the paper by Dr William Ronan (reported in CM last week). He had said that passenger comfort in buses would decrease owing to the need to save energy on heating and lighting.
Introducing his paper, Dr Ronan said the era of cheap energy was over. Oil fuels should be reserved for the petro-chemical industry—and transport power should be derived from nuclear energy or coal. He predicted future legislation to compel the use of public transport where it was available and to ban the car for non-essential journeys.
Dr Ronan said that the concept of personal transit systems was now out-dated. They were too elaborate and expensive and money available would be better invested in mass-transit systems instead.
Dr Ronan was supported on a more practical plane by M. Maurice Bourgoin, who described research undertaken to show that Paris RAPT could cope with the traffic generated by a possible 30 per cent reduction in the number of car journeys made.
Robert Bataille, directorgeneral of Lyons City Transport, said transport would best cope with the anticipated increase of traffic if all working hours were staggered.
Cheaper trolleys
He said that on present fuel costs that the Lyons trolleybuses were 50 per cent cheaper to run than the diesel buses.
Dr Dupuis, of Paris, said that action to reduce passenger comfort must be reserved for a real emergency. At present standards of comfort should be increased to lure motorists from their cars.
Mr Anthony Beetham, of the NBC, said he thought that coach excursions, tours and private hire journeys made very good use of energy and deserved more support and concessions from both governments and local authorities.
Mr Beetham also reported the results of the Eastern Counties research exercise that predicted the effect of stringent restrictions on car usage. This study found that a 400-mile-amonth car limit brought only a 5 per cent transfer to public transport and a 200-mile-amonth limit brought a 20 per cent transfer.
Transport consultants, Mr Brian Parker, of Travers Morgan, and Mr James Tresidder, of Freeman Fox, said that car restraint was not the way to promote public transport. They said the quality of transport should be improved and it should be more effectively marketed.
In reply to these points Dr Ronan said he did not believe that operators should seek to voluntarily reduce passenger amenities. He endorsed Mr Beetham's view that not enough attention had been paid by anyone to the fuelsaving nature of private hire and excursion coach traffic. M. Bourgoin added that he did not place much reliance on surveys of the intentions of passengers in reacting to possible changes; he placed more emphasis on actual behavioural studies.
Discussion of the paper "Motorbus and man" by Otto Schultz was very wide-ranging. The paper had described in detail features of bus design to maximise passenger comfort— both physical and psychological.
The alteration of noisemeasuring standards to relate them to actual street conditions was advocated by M. Yves Savary, of Paris RAPT. He said that his undertaking had found automatic buses to be only half as noisy in real terms as manual buses.
M. Paul Sicx, of Brussels STIB, said he had found that fully automatic buses used 8 per cent more fuel than semiautomatics. The cost of fitting and maintaining electric retarders was, he said, higher than the total cost of brake maintenance for the life of the vehicle.
Mr Thomas de Corral y Mena, of Madrid, said that the buses of his fleet now used a special diesel fuel containing only 0.1 per cent of sulphur in order to produce less pollution.
Low floors for buses were not as important as having high-level boarding points, said Prof Walter Grabe, of Hanover University, who advocated busloading platforms in the middle of the roads and on the same level as bus floors. Ticket vending and checking should be done outside the vehicle where possible to achieve a quicker transit time.
Mr Werner Johr, of Berne, questioned Mr Schultz' recommendations concerning the amount of standing room needed. In his view to allow for boarding and alighting there should be no more than four passengers standing per square metre.
Mr David Hollings, of Alan M. Voothees and Partners, suggested there was scope for research in how people interacted with buses, in both termini and street situations.
The author of the paper, Mr Schultz, replying, said in h opinion people should not, . a matter of course, have stand in buses. He still adv cated low gangways; se dimensions, however, we largely a matter for persor preference.
Rounding up after his par on the design of bus garag■ M. Jean Mouzet, of Pa RATP, thought the question whether open or covered z commodation should be p: vided was largely a matter local decisions with regard the climate. Modern vehic were more resistant to c rosion, but the noise of sta ing engines was bad from Or stabling points. Garages w roofs but no sides were possible compromise.
The setting up of a cc puter-aided maintenance p gram was described by Dr Sasso, of Naples. He sta that owing to lack of plann maintenance staff usually only about 50 per cent the work of which they w capable. A computer sysi for service and replacem could be set up based on life expectancy of indivic components. It was also portant that details of all w done outside of planned m tenance should be fed into computer to update the I gram.
The computer would responsible for both orde • the spares necessary from manufacturer and also for patching them to the re worker at the right time Mr Victor Zakharof, Leningrad, described a sy! in use there whereby the 1 • tion and passenger loadin every vehicle was fed on central dispatch consul to able the maximum efficienc utilising vehicles at any time. N FRONT of the conference entre at the Palais d'Exposion at Nice was a compreensive exhibition of over 50 uropean service buses. A reat deal of emphasis was laced both on the interior )mfort and the noise levels F these vehicles. The multior bus seems by now to be iirly standard in most Euro?an city fleets, and in general ith passengers and driver can Kpect a higher standard of imfort than in British vedes, Carpeted interiors were immon, as were comfortable )holstered seats with headsts,
ow ceiling
Scania, Berliet and Mercedes I showed vehicles with enpsulated engines as standard. ith Ailsa and MAN showed mble-deckers. Although the AN Berlin 'decker had a .ndsome and functional exnor it was marred by its low fling height in the lower loon, and by the narrow open iircase to the top deck.
The centre driving position is a novel feature on a new )11eybus by Mauri and Co. Three prototype buses had en produced by different inufacturers for evaluation the Brussels undertaking 'IB. The buses—a Jonckere-bodied Mercedes—a Bus d Car Co vehicle—and a Van 14Di-bodied DAF—were all built to the same specification, which included air suspension, upholstered seats with headrests, air-conditioning, and easy passenger access. All three had a prominent shock-absorbing bumper.
Midibuses were more in evidence with examples by Fiat, with a Van Hool body, and by SAVIEM and Berliet, with Heuliez bodies.
A prototype Berliet trolleybus had an auxiliary air-cooled diesel engine. This vehicle is capable of 60km/h on electric power, and 35km/h on diesel power.
The most noticeable theme of this outdoor exhibition was the comfort and silence of the buses on show. Speeding up operation was a feature of many of the stands in the exhibition hall. As well as the different fare-collection systems, there was also the Busmatic system for allowing city buses priority at traffic light controlled junctions. The buses of Nice City Transport are equipped with this system— but in my view it was defeated by the density of the traffic. The frequent bus lanes work far better.
All bus stops in Nice have covered waiting space and a prominently displayed stop name. Also route maps of those routes served by the stop are on show—a feature some British operators could well copy.