andrewducker | Interesting Links for 11-11-2018

Nearly all of my injuries are gardening related. Broken foot? Gardening. Gashes? Gardening. Pulled muscles? Gardening.

Those are huge buses.

I wonder if the decision to only have one wheeled conveyance space was a conscious decision by Lothian buses to prioritise commuter comfort over accessability.

As James Nicoll put it, wheelchair users migrate in herds, so you definitely want to have multiple spaces adjacent to each other in each vehicle.

The bus that formed part of my commute to work this morning was a 19-metre biodiesel-electric hybrid, with three wide-opening doors. The whole bus sinks low to the ground and tilts to one side whenever it stops. The front door also has a powered ramp. There are dedicated spaces for three mobility devices in the front part, plus the aisle is so wide there are usually another half-dozen strollers and shopping carts further back. Only the back end of the articulated tail section has steps. Despite being so accessible, it is very comfortable and roomy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaCYWHfFCNk

If articulated buses won't make it around sharp Scottish corners, our regional double-decker buses still manage to fit in two spaces for mobility devices, while still being quite comfortable.

https://www.gotransit.com/en/about-us/our-vehicles

My question isn't so much whether one can design a bus that has two or more spaces for wheeled conveyances and adequate levels of adequately comfortable fixed seating for able-bodied commutors. Clearly one can. Each of the 3 Lothian buses I was on today had two spaces for wheeled conveyances. But they also had a bunch of people of people standing.

I think Lothian buses run two types of route. Urban / urban and urban / suburban. Urban / urban routes run more or less entirely inside the city, between one densely populate part of the city and another, usually through the city centre. (Routes like the 22 from the north shore in the north-east of the city to the Gyle just by the airport, or the 35 which runs from the north shore to one of the universities' campuses just on the city by-pass). The Urban / suburban routes come from one of the commutor towns outside Edinburgh in to the middle - and perhaps out again to another suburban centre. (Routes like the 41 from Crammond and the 47 from Penicuik). (Plan 41 from Crammond should be an Ealing Comedy.)

This is in contrast to Stagecoach and Lothian's subsidiary Lothian Country Buses who run country buses in to Edinburgh from towns that are properly outside of Edinburgh, often calling at more than one town or village.

If you are on an urban / urban bus there are high levels of turn over. If you are on a short journey you don't mind standing. If you are on a longer journey there is an excellent chance that a seat will become free within a stop or two. There are likely to be frequent services, often by more than one service.

The urban / suburban buses I think have more people who get on near the terminus of the route and stay on the bus for up to 60 minutes. Less likely to be frequent or benefit from more than one service. The bus fills up quickly and there is less turn over. Standing all the way would be significantly less comfortable than sitting.

I think these new buses are aimed at the suburban / urban routes. The high backed chairs in the upper saloon suggest that Lothian buses are after passengers who are on the bus for a while and want a little additional comfort and privacy to e.g. watch Netflix on their phone. Arguably they are after people who might otherwise decide to take the car in a way that neither Andy or I would because we live and work in the dense urban centre. Removing the second wheeled conveyance space probably adds 3 or 4 seats whilst reducing the wheelchair spaces by 1 and the standing spaces by 5-8.

So, what I'm wondering is whether the design brief that was given to Alexander Dennis was - get as many seats as possible on the bus - or - prioritise the comfort of able-bodied suburban commutors over the convenience of urban wheeled conveyance users. Is the reduction in wheelchair space an accidental by-product of the design brief or a more callous design choice to sacrifice the less mobile in order to appeal to the marginal car / bus user. That's the nub of my question.

The designers aren't making the mobility device spots convertible?

On all new buses (urban non-bendy, suburban bendy, and regional double-decker) in my region, two or three of the three-seat sections at the front are on hinges. When a passenger needs to park in either of the spots, the driver pulls a latch and folds up the seats in one of the sections to make space. It does require the driver to put the bus in park and leave their seat to make the changeover, which might be a reason to not provide the option.

In this picture, you can also see the optional ties dangling on the floor (they're supposed to be secured so people don't trip on them).

https://www.ttc.ca/images/TTC%20Accessibility/Accessible_Service_Plan/Fig_4a_Bluefabric.jpg

In the newest Toronto subway trains, streetcars, and future LRT units, there are fold-down seats that are spring-loaded so they flip up when nobody is sitting in them. This frees up parking space, without needing staff to do anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Rocket#/media/File:TR_Wheelchair_spot.jpg

https://transit.toronto.on.ca/photos/streetcar-models/torontos-lrvs/ttc-lrv-9999-disabled-seating.html

Most of our buses have some of the spring-loaded flip up seats. More or less depending on the configuration of the bus and what job the bus is doing. They are more common on single-decker buses. They have a handy sign on the bottom of them to tell passangers that they will return to upright after the stand up. I find that sort of attention to detail reassuring.

We don't have the more manual ones. I don't know that I've ever seen them.

To be honest I think that having the driver stop and leave the cab might be controversial in Edinburgh because of the extra time it adds to loading and unloading. The centre of our city is, to use a bit of technical jargon, "fair rammed fu' o' eejits oan bikes, tossers in Landies and buses, man, o' the buses, and dinnae get me started oan the trams". Specifically the entry and exit paths from Princes Street are often overloaded. I change buses at the junction of Princes Street and one of the exit paths. Narrow, tight 5 way junction. There are two bus stops, 15 feet apart, serving about a dozen different bus routes. Between them they handle about 48 buses an hour, at rush hour probably a bus a minute. There is space for two buses to stack at one bus stop and 3 to stack at the other bus stop. If another bus turns up (or a lorry delivering beer to the one of the pubs, or an idiot in a Land Rover getting stuck in one of the lanes) then the buses start to back up on to the main junction of Princes Street, blocking the tram and the other three main exits from Princes Street at that end. Five minutes of that and we have a traffic jam stretching the entire length of Princes Street and 5,000 people on buses and trams that are not moving.

The double decker bus I was on this mornng had one buggy space and one wheel chair space.

One double door at the front left, next to the driver. The bus has some sort of variable suspension and a rather cool drawbridge / ramp that deploys if anyone in a wheelchair wants to get on. Or if the driver thinks you are being cheeky and wants to jab you in the ankles.

Narrowish corridor past the stairs on the right hand side of the bus and the left front wheel housing. The wheel chair bay is on the left-had side. You back your wheelchair up against a cushioned rest facing backwards down the length of the bus. I think this is so that in the event of a sharp deceleration any wheelchair user is pushed in to a cushioned rest rather than tipped over sideways. This seems to be a design standard on British public transport - to keep wheelchairs facing parallel to the direction of travel.

There is a single, spring-loaded seat facing forwards. Behind that is the buggy space next to the first of the fixed front facing double seats.

When not in use by wheeled conveyance users both of those spaces double up as standing room for communters. This seems to be most of the time, certainly at rush hour. I can go months without seeing a wheelchair user on the bus. My guess is that they avoid travelling at rush hour if they can because it's much more difficult. In a sense the wheelchair spaces are convertable from a wheelchair space to 5 standing spaces.

And this where we bump in to the my question about design choices. Edinburgh commuters seem okay standing when they are on one of the hop-on hop-off urban routes but grumpy about it when coming from the suburbs.

It's a bit of mystery given that Toronto is running Alexander Dennis 500's and the new buses that Lothian have bought are Alexander Dennis 400's.

There is a mobility device user on about every third public transit ride I take on urban buses or suburban bendy-buses in the Greater Toronto Area. Every subway ride I take seems to have at least one or more users. I haven't ridden enough of the new-style streetcars or double-decker buses to make an assessment.

I don't know if the greater usage is due to the greater number of available spaces, or if the greater number of available spaces is due to the greater usage. It may also be due to the sprawling nature of Toronto - it may be less convenient to just wheel over to your destination than it would be in Scotland (especially in deep snow), forcing more people to take transit.

I've never tested this for obvious reasons but I think that if one had an electric wheelchair or one of those mobilty scooters one could travel faster than a bus can through central Edinburgh during rush hour. Probably also when it wasn't rush hour.

Toronto has about five times the population of Edinburgh and Edinburgh has quite a high population density. It wouldn't surprise me if demand for wheelchair spaces was significantly lower. But also, we might be being bastards to wheelchair users.

Edinburgh looked at bendy buses in the wake of the People's Vote on congestion charging

https://www.scotsman.com/news/the-bendy-bus-edinburgh-s-flexible-friend-1-1004004

https://www.scotsman.com/news/there-s-a-twist-to-this-bendy-bus-tale-1-1004561

They didn't prove popular due to a mix of increased standing and the longer buses blocking traffic. Not so much the cornering as the chance that a long bendy bus stopped at a bus stop or a red light would hang over other junctions and block traffic at 90 degrees to the bus route. I think the idea of bendy buses has died a death in the UK after London withdrew them.

Best comment: "I love how the penguin one pretends like human beings dont already exchange shiny rocks to secure a mate"

Interesting Links for 11-11-2018

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