miklcct
On Moderation
I have moved from Hong Kong to the UK recently, and my first glance about the buses here is that, it is so 1980s! They are basically the same as the buses in the 1980s in Hong Kong with very few exceptions (low floor, and electronic plates).
The most prominent thing here is that, we don't even have seat belts on buses! This has reminded me an accident back in Hong Kong where a bus overturned because it went over the speed limit (50 km/h) entering a roundabout, and a passenger on a high-risk seat (the front of the upper deck) was killed being thrown out of the bus in the accident. The bus involved was an old model without seat belts, and all new buses in Hong Kong since 1998 are fitted with seat belts in high-risk seats (including the front of the upper deck, the middle seat of the back row, and face-to-face seats).
And here, I have seen speed limits entering roundabouts as high as 40, and the national speed limit for buses can be as high as 70 (while in Hong Kong, the speed limit for buses, along with other heavy vehicles, is capped at 70 km/h even on motorways - the speed limit in Singapore is even lower at 60 km/h). Won't it be much more dangerous if buses travel so fast without seat belts protecting high-risk seats?
Other things about UK buses which I feel so dated include:
The most prominent thing here is that, we don't even have seat belts on buses! This has reminded me an accident back in Hong Kong where a bus overturned because it went over the speed limit (50 km/h) entering a roundabout, and a passenger on a high-risk seat (the front of the upper deck) was killed being thrown out of the bus in the accident. The bus involved was an old model without seat belts, and all new buses in Hong Kong since 1998 are fitted with seat belts in high-risk seats (including the front of the upper deck, the middle seat of the back row, and face-to-face seats).
And here, I have seen speed limits entering roundabouts as high as 40, and the national speed limit for buses can be as high as 70 (while in Hong Kong, the speed limit for buses, along with other heavy vehicles, is capped at 70 km/h even on motorways - the speed limit in Singapore is even lower at 60 km/h). Won't it be much more dangerous if buses travel so fast without seat belts protecting high-risk seats?
Other things about UK buses which I feel so dated include:
- There is only a single door on the buses, which makes boarding and alighting slow. Buses in Hong Kong are always equipped with 2 doors, one for boarding and one for alighting. Buses with 3 doors existed in Hong Kong as well but infeasible with the current air-con buses designs, however, 3-door buses are deployed in other cities with longer vehicle length, allowing one door for boarding and two doors for alighting (such as Beijing and Singapore), reducing the stopping time even further.
- Drivers need to provide changes instead of the exact tender put into a farebox like in HK, or completely cashless as in most continential European cities, which also makes boarding slow.
- The buses are so short with only 2 axles, limiting passenger capacity. Most routes in Hong Kong are served using 12 m double deckers, and gradually moving to 12.8 m, with shorter buses only used on services with physical limitations. In Berlin, double-decker buses can be as long as 13.7 m. Such buses can accommodate more than 150 passengers in full capacity (including standees).
- There is no air conditioning in most of the buses here. In Hong Kong and Singapore, non-air-conditioned buses were all phased out around 2012, although some passengers complained about the resulting fare increase as air-conditioned buses were more expensive than non-air-conditioned buses.
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