Let’s Get Excited About the Humble Bus

Transit advocate Gil Penelosa is famous for his quip that “An advanced city is not a place where the poor move about in cars, rather it’s where even the rich use public transportation.” Yet, many communities hold the perception that the humble bus is a last resort only for people who cannot afford a car. Meanwhile, in cities, buses carry people from every social strata to jobs, recreation, education and their errands down arterial routes quickly and efficiently. This can be the case in any sized city and town – if we give the bus, a transit system workhorse, the attention it deserves.


The buses are often absent from the mainstream conversation during capital budget planning, despite them carrying most riders and consistently serving a greater range of communities than trams, subway or commuter rail. 

Despite this, buses have the capacity to address the developing mobility needs of our communities for relatively little capital expense. The result can be more operational efficiency, better network accessibility, and cleaner, greener neighborhoods. 

There are three areas of opportunity to realize this: doubling down on bus rapid transit (BRT); investing in better technology; and even enhancing aesthetics. These three areas could be municipalities’ biggest return on transit dollars spent while creating a dramatic shift in the attractiveness of bus options for the riders of the future.

BRT has huge potential to transform rider perception of a typical urban bus commute. Put simply, BRT takes a regular fixed bus route operation and enhances the infrastructure to help expand capacity and frequency. Designed properly, this style system can give buses priority at intersections, provide dedicated bus lanes on otherwise high-traffic routes, and feature infrastructural improvements with subway-like amenities like better waiting areas, improved accessibility and fare payment systems, and live timing updates. Like our operations in Reno, Nevada, level access platforms at bus stations even help speed up the boarding process and are particularly beneficial for the disabled or those with added mobility needs. 

Cities in Europe have adopted BRT with enormous success — developing gleaming stations, easy-to-access platforms, and service improvements that put BRT into a transit category of its own, incorporating unique and appealing aesthetics to further attract new riders. But political will to dedicate the space to such amenities is frequently lacking. In order to truly capitalize on the long-term benefits of the approach, policymakers will have to be comfortable with the upfront investment to upgrade these networks. The good news is, those upgrades can pay off — even with marginally less road space, overall throughput can actually increase thanks to the relative capacity improvements of BRT when compared to cars. 

In the French city of Pau, Keolis now operates a hydrogen-powered BRT network. Most of this network operates on a dedicated route and the design of the bus features a rounded front and wheel coverings. This design makes the bus look more like a tram, an important feature for attracting ridership. Research has found prospective riders have an affinity for tram (aka streetcar) design. Transit networks with trams have 50% more ridership than those with just buses. BRT can be that bridge to network and ridership growth.

But better infrastructure and technology only go so far; the real battle for the soul of the bus relies on a persistent image problem. As Steven Higashide notes in his book Better Buses, Better Cities, commonly repeated stereotypes around buses — as uncomfortable, last-resort modes of cheap transit reserved for a certain socioeconomic status — do just as much to dampen bus ridership than any tangible service offering. Like much of the United States’ infrastructure, bus networks were designed to emphasize divisions among already segregated communities. But perhaps more than any other infrastructure investment, buses can likewise be used to reunite them. One measure to consider is setting up level access boarding in buses – ensuring buses are level with platforms, so that passengers do not have to climb any steps to board. Level access boarding is easy to implement, speeds up the onboarding and deboarding process for riders, and is a complete game changer for the disabled. Buses can remain a cheap and efficient form of transit for the communities that rely on them while also giving new communities of riders something to get excited about — potentially as an easier, quicker alternative to their cars or inefficient daily rail commutes that require longer walks or combination car trips.

Making buses quieter — as cities like Hamburg have done with zero-emission electric or hybrid buses — also increases their appeal. In the long term, these are relatively small investments that can dramatically increase the appeal of an otherwise “normal” bus ride. 

Alternative energies are the future of mobility, especially the bus. This is a win for passengers, the communities where they operate and even for the taxpayer. Most diesel buses will require a mid-life overhaul to keep them on the road. Electric buses do not require such extensive overhauls. While the initial sticker price is typically greater than a diesel bus, electric bus lifetime costs can be as much as $500,000 less than traditional diesel buses.  

More bus riders create a virtuous cycle: increased ridership leads to fewer cars on the roads, which in turn leads to less crowded streets and lowered commute times, as well as a significantly reduced overall carbon footprint. In that way, buses could hold the key to a greener, less crowded city of the future. But first, people must want to ride. As riders look for fast, comfortable, and efficient public transit options in 2022, cities will have to think long and hard about how to make the unsung hero of the public transportation world cool again.


Aline Frantzen is CEO of U.S. Bus Operations — Keolis. Visit www.keolis.com and www.keolisna.com for more information.