Coach speeds

[notadriver]

Should coach speed limits be increased to make them more competitive with trains ?

 

[Ianno87]

Why do they need to try to compete with trains on speed? Even if driving at 70mph there will still be a significant journey time difference with rail in nearly all cases, especially with road congestion factored in. It might make an hour's difference a mere 55 minutes' difference instead.

 

[Wirewiper]

No they should not. Coaches mostly don't compete with trains on speed anyway, but on price.

 

[Gingerbus1991]

I'd still personally take a coach over a train despite the increase in journey times, anyone else?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I'd still personally take a coach over a train despite the increase in journey times, anyone else?

Depends on the specifics of the journey. If it's a long journey (e.g. Newcastle to London) then the time differential becomes important. By the time I'm in Kings Cross, the NX425 is still sat in Leeds! The train is considerably quicker, more comfortable, I can stretch my legs, has better facilities.

In terms of speed, Bath to London is a train job but if I'm heading to Heathrow, then the benefit of a direct coach rather than faffing around changing means the coach wins out. That also brings in the issue of reason for travelling and issues like luggage etc. The location of termini is also important, again for the convenience/time/general buggeration factor.

 

[WatcherZero]

Ive been on rail replacement services all over the place with some long distance services being an hour or more faster by road (by skipping part or only doing odd/even station calls), ive seen some suburban which match the rail timings almost to the minute while calling at every station and then ive seen some long distance where despite skipping stops its still an hour or two slower.

 

[LiviCrazy]

When I used to go to Inverness, it was generally a lot faster to go from Edinburgh by coach than by train. It was even faster going from Livingston if I cut out Edinburgh and went to Ferrytoll, that was before Fife decided to build the second park and ride meaning no connectivity.

 

[radamfi]

Some older people may remember the days before limiters when 70 mph was probably exceeded a lot of the time.

(The coach speed limit on motorways is 70 mph today but limiters restrict the speed to 100 km/h).

62 mph is a reasonable limit from the point of view of fuel consumption, emissions and safety, and other traffic should arguably be similarly restricted. The ban from the outside lane is more frustrating as it often means being stuck behind lorries doing 56 mph.

When coach deregulation happened in Germany, a company took advantage of the lack of speed limits on much of the Autobahn network by running a minibus service between Munich and Berlin, as full size coaches are restricted to 100 km/h, but I believe that service has ceased.

 

[broadgage]

IMHO speeds for coaches should not be increased.
Coach travel seems subjectively to be less safe than rail, and the risks should not be increased by greater speeds.

Does anyone have actual data, such as fatalities per million passenger miles, and serious injuries per million passenger miles, for coach and rail transport.
Care required to ensure that the figures are not misleading. Excluding suicides and death from natural causes.

 

[richw]

Depends on the specifics of the journey. If it's a long journey (e.g. Newcastle to London) then the time differential becomes important. By the time I'm in Kings Cross, the NX425 is still sat in Leeds! The train is considerably quicker, more comfortable, I can stretch my legs, has better facilities.

In terms of speed, Bath to London is a train job but if I'm heading to Heathrow, then the benefit of a direct coach rather than faffing around changing means the coach wins out. That also brings in the issue of reason for travelling and issues like luggage etc. The location of termini is also important, again for the convenience/time/general buggeration factor.

Personally if the coach is a fraction of the price I will accept the slower times.

Last time I went to London, from Redruth in Cornwall, Megabus was £5 each way, the train was over £100! 7-8 hours versus 5.5 hours but over £90 saved makes the time differential tolerable!

 

[GusB]

Some older people may remember the days before limiters when 70 mph was probably exceeded a lot of the time.

(The coach speed limit on motorways is 70 mph today but limiters restrict the speed to 100 km/h).

62 mph is a reasonable limit from the point of view of fuel consumption, emissions and safety, and other traffic should arguably be similarly restricted. The ban from the outside lane is more frustrating as it often means being stuck behind lorries doing 56 mph.

When coach deregulation happened in Germany, a company took advantage of the lack of speed limits on much of the Autobahn network by running a minibus service between Munich and Berlin, as full size coaches are restricted to 100 km/h, but I believe that service has ceased.

I'm not sure how I feel about being referred to as "older people" Most of my coach travel was done in my student days when I experienced many a hair-raising journey. 70mph was a regular occurrence on ordinary dual carriageway, and not unknown on certain stretches of single carriageway roads either. At that time limiters were fitted to some coaches (70mph) but in many cases, and particularly on older vehicles, they either didn't have them, they didn't work, or had been disconnected. I have to admit that coach travel lost a bit of its appeal for me when the 100km/h limiters were brought in, but I'm happy to accept the lower limit.

 

[duncombec]

Removing the outside lane restriction - even if in certain circumstances - could negate the need to remove the limiter, although most modern coaches could safely do 70mph in my opinion.

We were in a situation recently where on a 4-lane section of motorway, going uphill, an HGV in the inside lane being overtaken in lane 2 by another HGV. We were stuck in lane 3 behind a small, underpowered car (I have no idea what it was - call it a Nissan Micra for argument's sake) that was going faster than the lorries, so was arguably rightly in lane 3, but we were going faster than her, and thus had to slow down, in lane 3, to avoid catching them all. We would have been safer overtaking the lot of them at a constant speed for a brief moment in lane 4, but were precluded from doing so. Instead, all other traffic was forced to pass us, still (presumably) doing legal speeds in lane 4.

 

[carlberry]

Should coach speed limits be increased to make them more competitive with trains ?

The difference it would make would be minimal. It's odd for a scheduled coach service to have a long direct run on a motorway anyway and a jump from 62mph to 70mph would only give a gain of a bit over 10%. As others have said if any part of the journey ends up behind a lorry it's back down to 56mph anyway. Few long distance services have the luxury of bus/coach priority access into the terminus points so these sections are always going to be tedious compared with a train.
Removing the third lane restriction would give a useful boost in some circumstances however, whilst it was brought in on spurious safety grounds, it's removal would be unpopular with car drivers and politicians listen to them much more than a few coach passengers.