On most bus systems I’ve seen, information about the route is on a changeable sign, not painted or printed on the bus itself. Many bus operations have constrained facilities and need to be able to quickly deploy whatever bus is handy to meet a need, so bus operations folks resist marketing ideas that involve making the buses too specialized. The more different kinds of buses there are, the more likely it is that the one they have handy will not be the one they need.
But several British bus operators disagree. In both Birmingham and Cardiff, I noticed many buses decorated specifically for use on one route, or one closely related family of routes.
Here are some examples from Cardiff (Welsh on one side of the bus, English on the other):
Birmingham’s buses, by National Express, lack that list of destinations along the top but have other information, often with an emphasis on comfort.
While the Birmingham buses convey useful information, I really like the Cardiff design, especially the list of destinations along the top of the vehicle. For someone who knows the city, these give a quick and useful sense of what the bus does; for the visitor, they at least advertise destinations that might be of interest.
Many historic public transport vehicles used to be marked with a list of destinations painted on the vehicle. You can still see this on some San Francisco cable cars:
And of course, the same tool is used now and then for commercial services that only do one route. But I was struck in Birmingham and Cardiff by how widely these were deployed: Not on every route, but seemingly on the most frequent ones.
European cities are hard to navigate. A route can’t be named after a single main street that it uses, as is often possible in North America. Instead, every route’s identity can only be conveyed by a list of places. As I’ve explored various British cities where I didn’t know the network well, I found myself valuing this prominent information about each route. I also appreciated how these buses, especially the Cardiff ones, invite me to think about possible trips I could make in the future. They help me see my options.
The operational barriers to doing this are real. I have seen many North American operating bases that are far too constrained to enable buses to be dispatched this way, with a separate stack of buses reserved for each route. But it could be part of making buses more attractive to people, in cities where that’s an issue.
Painted route branding often leads to less efficient scheduling. Normally, the same vehicle is used for multiple routes during the same day. Since this is not possible with route branding, you often need more vehicles, and more drivers to be paid. It also makes it harder to create runs that complies with the work rules, this also increases the need for drivers and can also lead to runs that are less attractive to drivers.
Remember the real reason for why painted route branding is so common in the UK: deregulation. When multiple operators compete for the same passengers, marketing becomes very important. In London, where buses are not deregulated, all buses have the same livery, and the same in the re-regulated bus network in Manchester. If the rest of the UK also re-regulates the buses, painted route branding will most likely disappear.
I’m surprised! I would’ve thought most buses start at the depot, do however many runs up and down the same line, then back to the depot for driver change and cleaning.
I can see that this might be different with infrequent routes though.
There are usually requirements and restrictions like, the end of the line needs to have parking suitable for buses and a place where the driver can use the bathroom and take lunch, etc.
Particularly for routes that go to city center, it’s not often feasible to have a lot of buses park, and so the bus may be paired with a shorter route to get the driver to facilities.
Some colour-coding of major route “bundles” would be an alternative.
I’m thinking of a collection of routes that share a distinct artery for a portion of their journeys. It would help to pick out at a distance (or through rain) which buses to flag.
A case you may remember is in Sydney where many buses start in the CBD and travel down one street for the first 1-2 km, but then split off into 3-4 different directions for the next 2-5km and then branch again.
This reminds me of the old Tri-Met maps in Portland, where there were 6 or 7 sectors, with routes in each area drawn in a different color on the system map, with crosstown routes in black. Making the physical buses different colors too would have been fun and useful. Being from the Twin Cities, and having returned after bopping around the US and Canada in the 1990s and early 2000s, I always like the “purple rain”, LOL!
Or do both – coloured bundles AND major destinations. Well you can’t swap out buses if the colour is painted, would there be an option to get bands of LED lights? Turn red lights on for the red line, green on when running the green line, etc.
The old trolleys here in Halifax, Canada, had lights on the front. Different combos (and maybe colours) would should the route, in addition to signs (e.g. Beltline, Gottingen, etc.). Presumably the lights could be seen at a longer distance than the signs were legible. If they could do that in the 1920s, surely it’s doable today.
With the decreasing costs and weight of digital signs, couldn’t we find a middle ground — something like the Cardiff signs, but on digital screens running the length of the bus? Swap the bus to a new route, just flip the switch on a new sign. Almost every agency already does this on the front signs above the windshield.
I semi-routinely see more generically-branded buses on these routes as well, so I think it’s that 90% or even 100% of the buses needed for those routes have the livery, but the ‘spare’ or ‘backup’ buses are set up to be viable for any route they might be needed on.
Should busses be painted for advertisement?
How often should busses be repainted?
I live in the city of Luebeck in Schleswig-Holstein state, Germany. The most important bus lines for most inhabitants are one-digit or low two-digits numbers. For historical reasons (to put it short) bus lines to or through Kuecknitz and Travemuende are numbers 30-40, and a different company. So, vehicles and drivers are different ones, although it’s a combined network. When bus drivers were on strike it was good for me to know that bus 32 still left 19:21 from my third-best start bus stop to my third-best destination bus stop.
Busses (or coaches) of Autokraft, a daughter company of Deutsche Bahn serving rural areas in Schleswig-Holstein with no trains now seem to be painted brand-like in darkgreenlightblue. And so now are trains in the nah.sh area.
I remember from childhood that there were always advertisements painted on city busses. I’m not so sure though for Travemuende busses. I just saw a bus ad of a ferry company on a bus that would normally never go to Travemuende ferry port.