Double-Decker Buses and English Public Transportation

When most of us think of England, one of the images that instantly comes to mind is the English Double Decker Bus. The ones that I remember from way back and what I used to see in movies looked pretty much like the one here on the left. The driver sat up front in what had to be a hot little compartment right next to the engine of the bus. Next to him was the hood (or bonnet as they say over here) covering the engine. Entry to the bus was at the back of the bus where a ticket agent/conductor stood selling and checking tickets. The stairway up to the upper deck was right at the very back end of the bus next to where the ticket agent stood. Having never rode in one of these models, I'm not sure what the comfort level was like. These buses are narrow so that they could drive down the narrow streets of London and other English cities where often cars were and still are parked parallel on the street sides leaving little room for traffic. And the upper deck gave greater passenger capacity.

The same rules apply today in English cities, especially the old parts of town. So the English Double Decker bus still lives on, but in a more modern guise. The best part, I'm sure, is that the suspension is more modern and now they have moved the engines to the back of the buses. This has forced a change in the layout of the bus. As you can see, the buses are a bit wider and much more modern looking. I can testify that the ride is . . . well it's a bus, not a limo. :-) Since the engine is in the back of the bus, the builders had to move the entrance/exit door to the front of the bus and the driver takes care of all ticket sales. When I get a chance to ride one of these buses, I like to climb upstairs and sit as close to the front bench as I can. It's like no other ride in town! The majority of bus companies still use Double Decker buses on their high volume and or inner city routes. Occasionally, we'll see one drive past our house when it is being substituted for a regular bus which may be broke down or undergoing maintenance. And in the afternoon, when the local high school lets out down at the end of our street, I can see two or three Double Decker buses, painted yellow, waiting to take students home - these are for those students who live a fair distance from the school, more than a half mile or more.

The buses that I am most accustomed to are the more recognizeable single deck buses. These buses are even wider than the Double Decker buses and the seating is not quite as cramped because of this. But as my bus driver neighbor who lives across the street can testify, the Double Deckers are easier to manuveur around the tight suburb streets where everyone is forced to park on the streets. All of these buses have something akin to an active suspension in that when they stop to take on or let off passengers, they can drop several inches to make the step up or down easier on the passenger. And for these in wheel chairs, they also have a push-button ramp that lets down to allow the passenger to be wheeled on the bus. And on the bus, the front section of the bus, just behind the front wheels, is an area where wheel chairs or baby buggies can be parked, and fold down seating for passengers accompanying them.

As you can see from the above pictures, the manufacturers have made some effort to make the bus more aerodynamic, but there is only so much you can do to make a brick shape aero-efficient and still have plenty of room for passengers. Actually, there are Electric buses (with some kind of onboard regeneration, most likely a small gas turbine) that are quite aerodynamic. The cities of Newcastle and Gateshead run these Q-Link buses (Q standing for Quay - pronounced here "Key") from one side of the Tyne Riverside to the other. These are the newest buses to join the fleets here in Newcastle and it shows in their shape. They are not only much more aerodynmic in shape, but they run on electric motors and batteries. Every so often, at the end of their routes, they have to park and let their batteries be recharged. I ran across one doing this one day and all I could detect was a small high pitched whine coming from the windowless back of the bus and I could see the unmistakeable signs of very hot air rising above the back end of the bus. These buses are whisper quiet! Pedestrians hear mostly the sound of the tires on the roadway more than they hear the bus itself when it drives by, but there is still the sound of an electric motor when it gets real close to you. In the background, you'll see the Millinium Bridge which is a pedestrian bridge built over the Tyne to commemorate the 21st Century. To learn more about this amazing structure, click here.


But absolutely the wildest bus ride in Gateshead is the X66 Express Bus from the Metro Bus Station in downtown Gateshead to the MetroCentre, the local mall. The bus pictured above is not a Gateshead bus (the driver is on the wrong side), but it's a similar model. All passengers enter the bus at the front, but can exit from either the front or the rear sections. For the best excitement, I highly recommend riding in the back section where you can watch the hinging action in the floor of the bus. There's nothing like riding a bus that's bending and twisting in ways that buses shouldn't be bending and twisting. The GoNortheast bus company chose this type of bus for this high volume route because of problems with clearances for Double Deckers. There are several places where the bus must pass under very low overpasses, thus ruling out the more economical Double Decker.

One of the reasons that the Double Decker bus is still around and popular with bus companies is that all traffic signals are mounted on poles next to the street instead of suspended over the streets as we are used to in America. Power and other utility lines are buried, so there's no worry about overhead clearances in most cases And for the most part, they get a high capacity bus that's of similar length to a regular bus with nearly the same overhead costs.

So, why am I going on and on about the buses here in England? Well, there are several reasons why buses (and trains, for that matter) still figure prominently in the English image. Even though England has a proud automotive history in such names as Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Morgan, ect., the English population were not in a place to embrace the automobile. First and formost, they didn't have someone like Henry Ford who decided to make an automobile that the ordinary worker could afford. And at the same time, The English economy was in a shambles at that same time because of the very, very expensive Arms Race England had with Germany for the twenty or thirty years leading up to the First World War and the tremendous costs of that same war. On a side note, the reason the British call WWI the Great War is that they suffered over 3 million casualties in that war, compared to about three quarters of a million (military And civilian) in WWII.

Being that I am no expert, this is merely my own humble opinion, but I'd say that automotively speaking, the UK is about where we were in the United States in the 1950's and early 1960's. Most families that have cars have only one car. It is a rare household that has two cars permanently based there. And for a great deal of the people, the very, very well established bus lines serve them well enough that they don't bother with the tremendous costs of owning a car. By far and away, the biggest cost of owning an automobile over here is simply the cost of fuel!!! As I have said in posts before, gasoline (petrol), costs the American equivilant of about $10 a gallon! In a recent conversation with a man who is a district manager for Esso gas stations (yes, Esso still exists over here), I learned that more than 70% of the cost of gasoline is in taxes. You would think that with the North Sea oil fields, gasoline would be quite cheap. But it is some of the most expensive fuel in Europe.

Here, there are not only bus lines criss-crossing cities, but there are local bus services between all towns and villages, so if you are diligent and have enough money, you can transverse the whole of England via local bus services. I'm not talking about something like the Greyhound Buses we are familiar with that travel from major points to major points. I can go out of my house, walk about 200 yards or so to a bus stop and catch a bus that will carry me as far as Durham, England (about 15 miles or so away) and then the bus turns around and comes back to Gateshead, weaving around to the various and different villages in between, stopping at various bus stops according to passenger needs. Oh, there are long haul buses too, but they are mostly for hire, you know, private tours and such. Anyone without a car who wants to travel a great distance will catch a train to the nearest point and then work the local bus system to get to their destination.

However, this may be coming to an end in the near future with major consequences for the majority of the rural population that do not own an automobile. Recently, the fast growing bureaucracy of the European Union in Brussells has informed the Royal government that all the bus companies here in England are in violation of EU regulations and the companies will soon be facing major fines for non-compliance. Apparently, no bus route can be longer than 31 miles (50 km)! So what some bus companies have been forced to do is when the route reaches the 50 km mark, the bus driver must stop and make all the passengers disembark the bus, change the number of the bus route and then allow the passengers back on the bus only after they buy a new ticket. Some companies are afraid that the Brussells bureaucracy will not be satisfied with even this. The European Commission says that this does not present a problem in any of the other countries. But then again, the rest of Europe may not have places as sparsely populated as parts of England and Scotland.

From what I am reading here, there are many in Parliament who are not so impressed with the European Commission. But then again, the whole idea of becoming a part of the European Union is not a popular idea with most folks here in England, no matter how popular the idea is within the Labour Government now in power. Whatever the case, if the government determines to enforce the regulations, then this will put a lot of the smaller bus companies that serve the sparsely populated areas out of business and forcing the government to finance some kind of alternative transportation at, no doubt, a much higher cost that will ultimately have to be passed on to the electorate. I am very interested to see just how far the Labour Party is going to go out on this limb with the European Union before they see themselves voted out of office by a landslide election.