City Buses Get a Sleek Makeover

[Debbie Thompson]

We live on the L9 bus route.  The bus goes right by our front door. Others run nearby. They are usually empty, or with maybe half a dozen passengers. Why are we buying bigger busses? Don't they use more gas?  Shouldn't we be running smaller ones?  Has anyone seen a full bus lately?  I haven't seen a full bus since the 1970's, unless it was a shuttle to the Jags game.

[Ocklawaha]

We live on the L9 bus route.  The bus goes right by our front door. Others run nearby. They are usually empty, or with maybe half a dozen passengers. Why are we buying bigger busses? Don't they use more gas?  Shouldn't we be running smaller ones?  Has anyone seen a full bus lately?  I haven't seen a full bus since the 1970's, unless it was a shuttle to the Jags game.

The trend with JTA has been toward smaller buses, these are used on the community shuttles.

The problem with smaller buses is 75% of your cost is labor, and only about 25% can be recovered from the farebox. So a smaller bus has virtually zero chance of breaking even (as if that were really a goal). Add to this that the difference in fuel economy for a smaller shuttle type bus and a large diesel, electric or hybrid bus is extremely small, so there are no significant savings there either.

Passenger loads are very fluid, a bus that leaves empty from the end of the line in Mandarin on a morning commute might be standing room only by the time it rolls through Deerwood Center, then nearly empty arriving at Rosa Parks. The loads tend to roll up and down like waves on the sea and the very worst thing that one can do is leave passengers standing at the curb because there is no place to sit or stand.

Consider too that buses are not restricted to single routes, a bus with huge capacity but a talent for being hard on fuel might be rotated to a shorter and less frequent route while a smaller bus might have to fill in (as long as the math works) on that longer route. It's part art and part science, but a large city with a fleet of small buses is looking for huge headaches.

Just as a footnote, we also need motor coaches, over-the-road, Greyhound like coaches for our long commute runs. This is an area where JTA has been sorely lacking making due with just a handful of aging MCI's, which have bare interiors. A city with major corporate HQ's and the potential of subscription-fares, needs to pull out all of the stops when ordering the next generation of longer distance express coaches. Wi-Fi, restroom, overhead racks, 110 volt outlets, reclining seats, seat back tables, TV, GPS-such as 'Next Bus', and even a coffee bar. Offer a premium service for a premium price and we'd pack them in.

Hope this helps.