Single vs. dual or more doors

[Bletchleyite]

It is slightly bizarre why we have to be different. Most urban areas in the UK use single door buses, and it is painfully slow to alight/board passengers on busy services. Urban areas in most of continental Europe feels *generally* easier to travel around for this reason.

I'm very much in favour of dual door, but one reason it's not popular in the UK is the large number of routes which are "suburb to central bus station", and mostly only pick up on the way in and drop off on the way out. For those dual door doesn't really bring much benefit - for the gain you need a significant number of stops where people both board and alight. So they'd be of benefit to cities with only cross-city operation with distributed central demand, like Milton Keynes, and indeed the home of UK dual door, London. Edinburgh also used dual door for years.

There's one other case where it works, an actual rear door (rather than middle) encourages people to move down on busy single decker routes where a significant standing load is usual. And then you have routes like Oxford/Wilmslow Road in Manchester which really needs to be a tram but you can get a lot of the benefit with a long articulated or even double-articulated vehicle with 3 sets of doors and open boarding, basically a tram on rubber tyres on the road.

 

[Ken H]

I'm very much in favour of dual door, but one reason it's not popular in the UK is the large number of routes which are "suburb to central bus station", and mostly only pick up on the way in and drop off on the way out. For those dual door doesn't really bring much benefit - for the gain you need a significant number of stops where people both board and alight. So they'd be of benefit to cities with only cross-city operation with distributed central demand, like Milton Keynes, and indeed the home of UK dual door, London. Edinburgh also used dual door for years.

There's one other case where it works, an actual rear door (rather than middle) encourages people to move down on busy single decker routes where a significant standing load is usual. And then you have routes like Oxford/Wilmslow Road in Manchester which really needs to be a tram but you can get a lot of the benefit with a long articulated or even double-articulated vehicle with 3 sets of doors and open boarding, basically a tram on rubber tyres on the road.

In the UK we still rely on the driver or his machine checking passes and selling tickets. Abroad they go more for random checks by inspectors. I doubt bus companies want to pay for inspectors so I think 1 door buses are here to stay. (outside London)

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

We have been over this ground many times @alex397

It is largely history. In the 1960s, many new vehicles were indeed introduced with dual doors up until the early 1970s. However, then it really very out of fashion for a number of reasons. Operators were looking to maximise capacity and so losing four seats was an issue, especially when in the National Bus Co/Scottish Bus Group where vehicles would be cascaded out from urban work to country/schools operations. There is, of course, the extra cost when you buy, and it is something else to go wrong/maintain.

There was also an incident (think it was Birmingham) where someone was killed or serious injured in centre doors (the days before interlocks etc) and this coincided with union resistance in that they wanted either a two person crew or a single door. At the same time, you did have bus stations being built to saw tooth designs and that also favours a single door. As bus shelters were rebuilt/relocated to reflect that buses were no longer rear loaders, they were configured for single door front entrances.

Importantly, historically, we had a different perspective to how tickets were sold. Even in regulated times, there was a need for buses to try to cover their costs. Instead of selling tickets off bus (via newsagents who would require a proportion of the revenue), it remained largely the domain of the driver so again for reasons of revenue protection.

Hope that provides a bit of info to answer your question.

ps First in Bristol/Bath do operate dual door buses but they tend to be on routes where there is a pronounced on/off flow at termini such as park and ride routes or Bath to the University. Brighton and Hove also use dual doors too

 

[Roger1973]

Reading Buses also have a batch of dual door buses, bought in 2018 for the main cross-town route 17, some years after Reading (who were one of the operators who stuck with the dual door format well in to the late 80s, and later just panelled over the centre doors - article here) had reverted to front door only. (photo - not mine - on Flickr here.) A few from the batch now run on the former 'Greenwave' routes - I'm not sure if this was the original intention, or a result of requirements on route 17 having been reduced a bit.

There are some stops where the middle door can't be used, and others where it seems to be at discretion of the individual driver.

And I'm not sure what will happen if (as usually happens) new buses are bought for route 17 when the current batch reach mid-life and the previous batch are cascaded to lesser routes.

The revenue issue with multiple doors is a big one - one of the arguments frequently made against the bendy-buses in London was the level of fare evasion. Strangely enough the people / politicians who argued that did not generally make the same point about the 'new bus for London' LT class, although I understand that the rule has now changed and these are now supposed to be front entrance only.

 

[GusB]

Not another dual-door thread...

Historically, it was municipal/PTE operators (and London) that used dual-door vehicles, although I'm aware that there were some National Bus Company operators that had them (and Northern Scottish - the only Scottish Bus Group company to order them).

Before de-regulation those vehicles would largely be restricted to operating in urban areas where they would be of most use (usually with autofare or similar collection equipment) and it would be reasonable to expect that they would remain with their original owners until the end of their useful lives, whereupon they'd either go for scrap, or possibly to some independent operator. Often the centre exits wouldn't even be removed, but simply plated over.

Simply put, if you're going to run a city fleet then dual-door makes sense, but if you intend to cascade buses out to other parts of your empire, then you not only have the expense of ordering the vehicles in the first place, but the expense of converting them back to single-door configuration afterwards. Unfortunately it's unavoidable in London because the fleet has to meet certain requirements (and a certain age profile, I believe).

 

[Bletchleyite]

The revenue issue with multiple doors is a big one - one of the arguments frequently made against the bendy-buses in London was the level of fare evasion. Strangely enough the people / politicians who argued that did not generally make the same point about the 'new bus for London' LT class, although I understand that the rule has now changed and these are now supposed to be front entrance only.

This I think conflates dual door and open boarding, you can have either without the other. London has dual door but not open boarding (it has not locked the rear doors - it can't as that's how wheelchair users board!), and it still speeds things up because tapping in can be done very quickly.

 

[Ken H]

Not another dual-door thread...

Historically, it was municipal/PTE operators (and London) that used dual-door vehicles, although I'm aware that there were some National Bus Company operators that had them (and Northern Scottish - the only Scottish Bus Group company to order them).

Before de-regulation those vehicles would largely be restricted to operating in urban areas where they would be of most use (usually with autofare or similar collection equipment) and it would be reasonable to expect that they would remain with their original owners until the end of their useful lives, whereupon they'd either go for scrap, or possibly to some independent operator. Often the centre exits wouldn't even be removed, but simply plated over.

Simply put, if you're going to run a city fleet then dual-door makes sense, but if you intend to cascade buses out to other parts of your empire, then you not only have the expense of ordering the vehicles in the first place, but the expense of converting them back to single-door configuration afterwards. Unfortunately it's unavoidable in London because the fleet has to meet certain requirements (and a certain age profile, I believe).

Leeds were heavily into 2 door buses, single and double deck*. They had to because of getting and retaining enough conductors, and the cost of double crewed buses. They did have a few very busy routes where double crewed buses hung on till PTE days (After 1974). Other Yorkshire municipals (Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield) were less keen to remove conductors (it's said they didn't want to dispose of serviceable back loaders when take over by the PTE was imminent!) West Yorkshire road car had a few 2 door buses but generally not, but they were a different type of operator.

* Single deckers were generally AEC Swift/Daimler Fleetlines with Roe/Park Royal bodies. Double deckers were Fleetlines or Leyland Atlanteans, again Roe bodies.

 

[busestrains]

Multiple doors are fine but i believe that any buses that have two or more doors should always have a policy that boarding must be through the front door and the rear doors are only used for alighting. Otherwise it just causes mass fare evasion when you allow people to board through any door. This was the issue with the Bendy Buses and Borismasters in London which had lots of fare evasion. But sensibly TFL have scrapped middle door and rear door boarding on the Borismasters and you now must board through the front. So i think multiple doors are a good idea as long as you only allow boarding through the front door and keep the other doors for alighting only.

I do find it very interesting though how one door buses are so common in the UK but practically non existent in Mainland European countries. In fact in many Mainland European countries even two door buses are rare.

In many countries in Mainland Europe they have four door rigid buses and five door articulated buses. For example in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and some parts of Poland these are very common and seen in most towns and cities.

Some examples of these:

SOR NB12 - four door rigid bus:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/SOR_NB_12_číslo_3536_na_lince_267.jpg

SOR NB18 - five door bendy bus:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Sorcity_NB_18%2C_Skalka%2C_pravá_přední.jpg

They are certainly good for alighting quickly but the more doors means less seats.

The thing with one door buses is that it increases the amount of seats which is a bonus. Our buses have a lot more seats than most similar sized Mainland European buses. So i guess you will either have quicker boarding and alighting but more standing with multiple doors or slower boarding and alighting but more seats with one door.