@@BusDriverLife Hello there! I would like to recommend you to check out the link above (my channel), as I review public transit buses (Sonoma County Transit) in Northern California. Thank you!
It's all about getting in and out fast. I guess it has something to do with the fact that Europian cities are pretty densely populated and the suburbs are not as far away from schools, work places and grocery stores. The travel time might be shorter on average than in the US, which lessens the need for seats. People also often jump in for a couple of stops to shorten the walk in eg. city centers. So there's more need for standing places in that kind of areas.
@@BusDriverLifeMaybe check out some double articulated buses from Europe and you could also take a look, how buses used to look like 20-30-40 years ago here.
I couldn't agree more. And it shocks me to see how few people actually greet the driver when entering through the front door. I do, but at least in the part of Germany where I live it doesn't seem to be common. I wonder what's so hard about giving them some appreciation for the important work they do by smiling at them and saying hi. It's not gonna hurt, I promise!
European bus side mirrors hang from the top allowing the driver to see pedestrians in the crosswalk when turning. In North America the side mirrors are mounted low and pedestrians get killed by turning buses. I just missed getting hit by a turning bus.
I think North American buses designs aren't updated because public transit in the North America is regarded as a cheap service for the poor only. So the only goal is to make it cheap, and cheap to repair when vandalised. On the other hand public transit in European cities is used by every class of society, and often is even one of the icons of a city. For example London's iconic red buses or the underground. So look matters.
I think the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality that so many Americans seem to almost religiously adhere to plays a large part in buses, trucks and cars not really being updated. Many Americans seem to prefer large buttons, levers, analog dials etc over more modern buttons and displays just for that reason.
@@richman2601 I'm mentioning both BUTTONS and screens, so it looks like you're missing my point. As a former European trucker who drove for some years in the US in US trucks put it: - switches in US trucks need to be almost an inch long and a quarter inch wide or the trucker can't find them. - everything needs its own dedicated chrome lined dial mounted in a wooden dashboard because that looks cool. -switches are mostly lined up in rows without seemingly making much sense. European and Asian trucks are built with an ergonomically efficient environment in mind. Switches are grouped in dedicated blocks, with the most used ones close to the driver, because that makes more sense than just a couple of rows of switches in random sequences. Mercedes is even going as far as having related buttons grouped in blocks of 4 that can be popped out and changed in positioning on the dash, depending on what the driver finds more practical for his specific use. Dials have been mostly done away with because the screens will show the driver all the important and/or relevant information and the ECU will pop up an alert and display the less important information if something goes wrong. The whole philosophy of modern European and Asian trucks is to de-clutter the dashboard and let the driver focus on his/her main task more: driving a large commercial vehicle safely through dense traffic. Just the occasional glance at the dashboard screen will show the driver that the vehicle is still okay, has enough fuel and air pressure etc. The screen will show an alert, mostly by a flashing yellow/orange line around the edge when something starts misfunctioning and that alert will flash red when the misfunctioning becomes dangerous.
I'm a part time bus driver in Germany and I have driven the production version of the Citaro-e. We only have one of these as a test for the bus company, but it's really nice. It doesn't drive itself, that's just a gimmick and it has a proper bus interior designed for people to use. No different than the regular Citaro C2 and C2 hybrid. The cockpit area is amazing. It's very comfortable, ergonomic, practical and elegant with no weird switches, or dials that look out of place. The electric Citaro-e is just quieter. The standard Citaro is quiet, unlike MAN and Solaris, where you get a headache after a shift from all the noise. In a Citaro, I feel like I could drive from one end to Europe to the other and still feel good. And Citaros have so many luxury features. Seriously, the Citaros, or at least the ones at my company have - heated and ventilated seats, radar cruise control, blind spot monitoring, brake assist, rear camera, A/C and a radio with bluetooth functionality for calls, or music. In a city bus... I'm Bulgarian and when I grew up in the 90s, buses were these loud and obnoxious things, spewing clouds of black smoke, very cold in the winter, very hot in the summer, uncomfortable and the drivers had nothing. Hell, damn things were manual, so the drivers had to change gear constantly. Mercedes Benz make the best cars, best vans and best buses. As for trucks, sorry... I'm a Benz guy, but that title goes to Scania. (ex part-time truck driver... Scania rocks)
when i am in bangkok i sometimes use the public bus. it is fun. usually tourists do not use them. but they are very cheap and it is fun. of course and extreme loud diesel engine that shakes the whole bus, many decades old and a black cloud coming out in the back. i hope they will switch to quiet electric busses soon. bangkok is so loud
Are you refering to the last Mercedes one? I didn't know Citaro was their branch, if I understood correctly. But unfortunately, here in Greece we get all the discarded ones from Germany and Austria. Those buses are past their lifespan and get very little if any maintenance. There are even all the info stickers written in german still (which noone here speaks it). Unfortunately for those reasons I don't like them at all as a rider (sorry for not knowing the model names), however MAN is a better experience
@@ΌνομαΕπώνυμο-ο1τ I'm Bulgarian. It's the same deal in Bulgaria, old, retired buses from Germany and Austria. MAN, Mercedes, Neoplan, Vanhool and in the more obscure villages you can still find soviet junk like the Icarus, Laz, Chavdar and some I've never heard of. I hate using public transport, so I don't. I use my car, or a taxi.
@@ΌνομαΕπώνυμο-ο1τi mean if they handle all the abuse they're put through it shows that they are very tough buses and can handle terrible maintenance and whatnot. old european buses are probably like what the gm fishbowls here in north america were. you could run them in service for over 30 years without much going wrong.
As a European I found the City busses in the US odd. As a passenger I took a minute to realize what the cables along the windows are for (we have buttons every other row that can easily be reached by passengers sitting and passengers standing in the aisle). One feature I wish we could get in Europe are the bike racks on the front. On most transit systems you can't take bikes on busses. Very few systems have bike trailers, but for those the driver has to leave his seat and walk back the whole length of the bus.
Those strings were still on a few vuses in Sweden im the 90ties, not seen em in Europe since. Then I came to the US and it was like traveling back in time.
I believe it's much better to be able to actually take your bicycle with you inside of a bus. Unfortunately most busses don't allow for this (but there are some city busses that do!). Bus evolution should head in this direction in my opinion, even for busses that serve rural regions.
Depending on the numbers of passengers commuter busses in Denmark allow you to take a bicycle with you. For free. Though space is limited and need to be shared with baby carriages and wheelchairs. There are a maximum of two in each bus. The express busses only allow for bicycles outside of peak hours. Bikes are also allowed on commuter trains (S-Trains) with few restrictions, in the Copenhagen area. It’s allowed in the metro in of peak hours. On regional trains, a reservation of close to $ 3 is required - 4 bicycles is allowed on each train.
Did you notice the extra doors on Euro buses? This allows faster access & egress, thus shorter dwelling at stops, and a faster ride overall for the passengers.
In the town I where I work they changed the city bus operator and with that they replaced the the 3-Door busses with 2-Door ones and it makes a huge difference.
In Prague we have 4 door buses in regular length for city service and the 2 door buses are for longer lines beyond city limits where people should enter only through front door.
Have you ever noticed how the buses and trucks in the European markets look so much sleeker than the ones we have here? I mean, just take a look at those headlights - they're on a whole other level!
Headlight technology in the United States lags behind the rest of the developed World due to antiquated laws. We're lucky we are no longer stuck with round sealed beam headlights. My European car, a German make has very sophisticated headlights but for this market the software to drive the matrix features are turned off. We are stuck with crap headlight technology since our government won't allow us to have nice things.
the more modern headlights are adb. these only been allowed since 2022 in the us. i think thats the reason non us headlights looked so much better in the past.
The matrix lights on Audi models in the United States are still crippled by software. I know that some have altered that to give full capability. My dealer naturally is playing dumb. Mine is a 2024 model. It does have laser high beams that work way outside of the city, but the partial blocking of light for oncoming traffic does not work. @@anneliese187
Nice to see that #2684 Solaris bus from my city (Brno, Czech Republic) in your video. It was filmed in Medlanky depot which is shared with trams, you can see one of the Skoda 13T trams there plus also few Dekstra minibuses based on Iveco Daily van for less busy bus lines. Keep up the great work...
Solaris is a Polish bus producer. And the footage of self-driving Mercedes comes from tests conducted on a BRT line previously called the Zuidtangent that connects Amsterdam with Schiphol and Haarlem. As a Pole living in The Netherlands, I thank you for this video 🙂
Solaris is a Polish company where when you order a bus you wait up to two years for delivery. The company where I work has 200 11-year-old Solaris buses. There are 100 in the garage where I work. Solaris delivers buses with different engines, Mercedes, MAN, DAF. And equipment inside for the drivers. They also have electric buses with different battery capacities and they don't have external mirrors, but in the driver's cabin on the display.
Solaris is dogshit, the quality and replacement-parts wait are horrendous. In my area the identical Bus runs as in the Video just with different doors and seats, and compared to our Citaro and Lion's City busses, and even the Ivecos, they absolutely suck
@@heybenjii5544 really? That saddens me as a polish person, ive always been proud of the success of this company, its one of the most famous polish companies
@@foxy126pl6 Yes, really. And not only that. A friend of mine had to take buses on the way to work only and the operating company uses Solaris city buses only. These are so cheaply made, everything looks cheap and the hard plastic cracks everywhere. The seats are so thin and uncomfortable and have absolutely no room for tall people. You might think that the buses are only designed for small people. And the worst thing: The buses have no real suspension in the chassis at all. Driving is like driving with an old truck. That's unpossible at a passenger city bus with all the bad roads everywhere. This led to the friend no longer taking the buses and canceling his annual ticket. Now he rides with bike, which suits him better and gets him to work quicker because he can ride directly without having to take a detour, like the buses have to. Buyers can choose everything they want from the buses, but everything is still cheaply made and has no quality; that's absolutely unpossible. Best regards from Germany...
@@citroen-fan i see, but in my expirience the turkish mercedes buses are much more rattly than the solaris buses, at least here in Poland. I remember mercedes buses leaking water inside and the glass next to doors vibrating on every bump. And the seats are significantly better on solaris. Maybe the domestic market ones are better made? My city operates both solaris urbino and mercedes connecto.
I went to Europe for the first time about 3 months ago. A lot of their stuff over there is much more technologically advanced then here. Their busses are out of this world. But even there airports are better than here in the US
Surprisingly, I had no problem with orienting at big English speaking airports (Heathrow and O'Hare) which I visited for first time in my life, but I got lost at main airport of my country (Vaclav Havel Airport) where everything is in my language. People say it's well marked but somehow it didn't worked for me. O'Hare was way easier to walk through even after like 24 hours of being awake (with 5 hours of sleep before), compared to one in Prague after quite good sleep at first plane.
@@eljanrimsa5843tell a lie just a week ago an airline from my country lost a blind cat during an international flight it was travelling in the cargo compartment
If you like airports you'll love Singapore Changi Airport. Even Kuala Lumpur International Airport is good. Then we Australians come home and wake up from the dream.
The Isuzu bus is actually designed and built in Turkey (by Anadolu Isuzu). They make low-cost buses mostly for the Central/Eastern European and Middle Eastern markets.
Yeah. Though they're spreading to more places. The Citivolt shown in the video has been sold to a few customers in Denmark now, and Denmark's largest bus importer, VBI Group has struck a deal with Isuzu to sell their electric buses here. They already had a partnership to sell Isuzu's Visigo midi-coaches, but this just expanded it. And VBI Group is no joke for the market here. They also have a bigger partnership with Iveco and Iveco Crossway buses sold through VBI group dominated all of Denmark in the 2010's.
Generally speaking most of the busses, trams, trolleybuses in Europe are from Turkey. I live in Novi Sad, Serbia and our city busses are Turkish BMC busses on natural gas and Polish Solaris electric busses. Timișoara uses Turkish made trams. Turkish automotive products maybe have lower prices but they are state of the art.
@@bnast6849 It depends very much on region and which country you're in, it can vary a lot just from country to country. Like in Denmark where I'm from, most new buses are either Chinese, German, or Dutch. And before the electric boom, Czech built Iveco buses were extremely popular, and before that Swedish/Polish Scania and Volvo buses.
@@drdewott9154 We used to have Volvo and Mercedes before the city opted for more greener fuels mainly LNG and electric. To be honest, I love diesel engines but I prefer to live in a city where public transport has least harmful emissions possible.
Here in Brazil we have something called "Encarroçadoras" which are companies that build the body and interior, like Marcopolo, Caio, Busscar... Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Scania, Volvo, etc, just build the chassis frame, suspension and engine. Then is possible with the same structure bellow, have multiple bodies and interiors, each one different from the other.
Solaris is a bus from Poland. It is used in many countries. With various drives, from hydrogen through electric to diesel. We also make excellent trams and trains.
That driver seat area at 4:20 reminds me very much of how German buses looked like in the 1970´s or 1980´s ... P.S.: I´m German (driving trucks but not buses ...) but I can still rember that buses looked like that during my school days - using regular local buses to commute between home and school. In Germany there´s never been such a thing like special school only buses as in the US. Only in a few cases regular buses are used for special school routes (that usually still can be used by anyone else if the routing fits their needs ...) ... and that interior of a 2015 bus seems extremely basic offering effectively no comfort for passengers aside from being able to sit down "somehow". The Solaris articulated bus shown is a modern but still somewhat "cheap" (=reduced to the minimum requirements). MAN/Mercedes/Volvo/Scania/Iveco are more expensive but offer better riding comfort for passengers and drivers. That Mercedes at the end of this vid is just an idea of what future buses - could - be like. I live and work near the Mercedes bus factory in Mannheim/Germany and I have never seen this particular bus driving around here. It´s obviously a one-off featuring all ideas that could be implemented into future serial production. This bus is just a show case. But believe me buses here in Germany are way more comfortable for passengers to ride and drivers to operate than those in the US.
USA generally has much worse public transport coverage than Europe, which is why American schools have to use their own buses to get children to school in the morning and back home in the afternoon. Whereas in Europe, children usually just take a normal bus or train within the public transport system.
@@lolookie1682then you have places like Australia. Most places here have dedicated school bus routes, but they’re serviced by the local public city bus company. The school buses are the same as every other bus on the road, it’s just only school students are allowed on dedicated school routes.
Here in Switzerland we have lots of bi-articulated trolleybuses from HESS, a local manufacturer. They are 25 meters long (about 80 feet). These are really fun to watch, especially in a tight curve. If you aren't used to them, you see the second section and think that's the end, only for even more bus to show up. The newer models have a huge rear window, so the best seats are at the back of these buses. You can look backwards to see everything behind the bus or look forwards to get a view of the extra bendy interior.
the mercedes one was a concept from a few years ago. the production version is called eCitaro. we have a few of them here in norway. really nice and comfortable to ride on.
The Mercedes Benz was a test or pilot running a few years on a bustraject in the Netherlands. I have seen I in action thinking, how much will we see in the real model.
@@karevilen Lets make it 95. 58 18m and 37 12m. First 12m will arrive 3th week of april the first 18m will arrive in may. Going to be used as first to train there employes and in september to december the rest will arrive and then they are going to be used.
From this side of the pond, I totally agree. Public transportation in Europe (trains, Metros and Buses), are nicer,more comfortable, and cleaner. Vandalized buses? Do people vandalize their own homes? After all, public transportation vehicles belong to the people. Paid for by their taxes! Fixing things up requires more tax-money,
Solaris is a company based in Poland, with quite an amazing history. Their buses can be seen in most of the Polish cities now. They do have an effective international market strategy, so I can see the buses in Brussels, and I have seen them in some French cities. Now that company was a family company, set up in 1990s by an engineer who worked at Neoplan in Germany, then he imported Neoplan buses to Poland, and on that foundation he built a company of his own. He ran it successfully, together with his wife till their retirement age, and they sold the company to Spanish CAF. The model shown in the video is very popular in Poland, and it is not the most recent one, more of a workhorse, here shown in Wroclaw, probably for the Czech market. Please do feel invited to Poland, if there are commercial and testing visits, there might be export to America perhaps. Also, ten years is a long time, but it's true even the modernised driver’s post is not really too modern.
6:18 Solaris Urbino 18! Solaris is a company form Poland! And actually we in Poland love those busses! But this is a Czech version. In Warsaw we have cloth like chairs, not plastic. :)
True. This one is from Brno in Czechia (DPMB - Brno public transport company). These plastic seats are easier for cleaning, but when driver turns faster, you can slide off :) DPMB is specific with its big workshop, so they buy these buses without motors and assemble electrical motor and trolley sets in it. like this one ruclips.net/video/qmIesWDP6Tc/видео.htmlsi=O8UpNfJX8tu9bKJ_
I was wondering this. I take these buses everyday but never realised the company actually *is* Polish. Ironically, the bus being painted in the Polish flag threw me off 😂 (in Poland they use different colors)
But why is the suspension so hard? On bad roads the other buses we have here are better: vanhool, MAN, Mercedes doesnt matter, but the solaris ones pull your teeth out if the roads are bad.
@@superbrownsheep3777 That'd be interesting but cautious. Ebusco is a controverisal manufacturer, and here in Denmark we've invested in a lot of Ebusco buses, but they've been some of the least reliable on the market. Especially their newer 3.0 model thats developed entirely in house with daring design choices like a fully carbon fibre construction and batteries built into the floor. I've heard reports from bus drivers that the buses dont handle well as if the very structural chassis of the buses cant handle the conditions of regular bus service and are shaking themselves apart.
@@BusDriverLife if Solaris comes to US, it will differ from EU version to comply US standards and requirements and it will be designed like US bus too. Just have a look to Crown-Ikarus history: the articulated Ikarus 286 was just like the ordinary US bus made from US parts and it didn't look like Ikarus 280 or 283 model. The Škoda 14TrE and Škoda 14TrSF trolleybuses made for US also significally differed from European Škoda 14Tr or Škoda 14TrM.
The main reason I can see as to why buses from elsewhere are so different from ours, is regulations. For example, the dashboards we have here are not regulated at all as far as I know. But in Europe, dashboards have been regulated and unified by the "Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen", or VDV, since the late 90s. If you look at other buses made in Europe by various brands in various countries, like MAN, Mercedes, Iveco, Solaris, Bollore, etc... they all have very similar dashboards, with buttons mostly all in the same spots. Each brand get to have slight variations, but they're all based on the same concept. Another reason could be the mentality of people when it comes to public transit as a whole. Here it's often viewed as the "poor man's choice", while in Europe it seems to just be considered as another mean of transportation. Hence why the networks are so, SO much more developed than they are here, more people are potential targets. So manufacturers also try to please to more people, and operators are better funded. Personally I believe modern doesn't mean better looking. The Isuzu reminded me of an Iveco design, and I think it's butt ugly, but to each their own. I prefer a more conservative look, but I do agree some of our buses do need an update on other aspects, especially the driver's area, but I don't mind the split windows lol
The Drivers place in europe is a ISO Norm regulatet thing, it is almost the same for all Busses. so Drivers have all the Switches and Steering Wheel on the same place so every Busdriver can drive it without problems.
Just started my 3rd day training for my local transit. Thanks for the real life videos, it helped me to understand what I was getting into so that I could go into this profession level headed with a good understanding of what to expect. Keep up the good work and honest video's!
Solaris has plans to enter the US market in 2026 with a design developed specifically for the North America. Apparently you can't just transplant European busses to the US without some changes. With all the nice things you said about Solaris in the video, if you contact the manufacturer they might give you a test ride. You would have to travel all the way to the factory in Poland though.
@@Taki_tam_ktos In Singapore we were recruiting more bus drivers from China & people were complaining they were less fluent in English, to serve the minority races in the country
I think that it's just about too much change at once: back in the nineties, the environment was the next best thing and the more eco-friendly a vehicle could be, the better. But the vehicles you saw usually were so drastically different on the outside that they just seemed to shout 'hey! look at me! I'm an eco-friendly vehicle!'. Thus, such vehicles usually were never heard from again. I guess it's the same for buses. Just taking European buses to the US will probably be such a radical change that people will reject it, if not even for the 'but why not something from our american bus-manufacturers!?'
Ikarus, the Hungarian bus brand. Even manufactured in the US in the 80s. Also Ikarus was the company that produced the first fully low-floored articulated bus in the world.
As a German Viewer, it's very interesting to see the differents between American and European Busses. The Mercedes Benz Bus in the last part of your Video, this was a prototype. Most German Cities like Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg have these Busses. There are called Mercedes eCitaro. And they have nearly the same look, but there are some differents.
@@ska042 SIngapore now also has many Citaros & Lion's City but the latter's bodywork, while having a similar design to buses in Europe, is built by Malaysian coachbuilder Gemilang instead, maybe as it's cheaper. 3 door buses were rare until recently though as the engine is on the port side & thus a 3rd exit means having to step over the engine (with the country being RHD), which is less convenient. We also have a similar no. of Scania K230UBs not only used as public buses with Gemilang commuter bus bodywork, but also a few were fitted instead with bodywork from SC Auto/Chivalrous (for use as shuttle buses originally to serve a university's campus) that seemed to have been converted from a coach to a commuter bus design, so they're unaturally tall & also seem like they have more inertia, leading to more sluggish acceleration on upslopes & more lurching forward when braking, though they ride out road bumps better. Uniquely Singapore also has an almost equal no. of single & double-decker buses (60% vs 40%), with the latter originally consisting mostly Volve B9TLs but now with more ADL Enviro500s & MAN A95s too. We might also be the only customer of MAN A24 (the non-integral bodywork version of the A23 articulated bus I think). Now our gov't is buying only electric buses which come mainly from China instead e.g. BYD K9, Yutong E12(DD), though we also have 20x Linkkers
You mean finally someone in the US who says NORTH America. The rest of the world has no problem with saying "North America" and many cringe when they hear US citizens calling themselves "Americans" as opposed to other inhabitants of the American continent .
Austrian here, lets check out MAN Buses from 2003-2005. Exactly same interior like the one in the 7th minute. Feels good to look back to a point when i was a teenager 🤓 I hope you get a nice ergonomic pneumatic cockpit bus soon. You deserve it.
well, I live in Switzerland and the bus that drives in my region and also takes me to school every day actually is very often the Solaris Urbino 18. Sometimes it can aswell be the MAN Lion's City 18 or Mercedes-Benz Citaro G (all 'operated' by "PostAuto CH"), and I gotta say that they are all very nice to drive with. Especially the newer Solaris; it is very comfortable, modern and also looks amazing from outside. And even though I am used to it, I really enjoy driving these busses every day and I just can't imagine how it is to drive in an american bus.. Love your videos, all the best from Switzerland❤
The Solaris is the one used in the Brno City Transport Company (DPMB) that bus is really quiet and comfortable, air conditioned, contactless payment, and love the ramp for wheelchairs/strollers. Also what I’ve seen, it is really friendly with the drivers.
@@flyLSYes! Also in my willage we have new MAN bus its not that fast but smooth and spacy too. I rememeber whe i was young going to shool using old buses,loud,smelly,slow.. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jablonec_nad_Nisou,_autobusov%C3%A9_n%C3%A1dra%C5%BE%C3%AD,_bus_Karosa.jpg Something like this.
On the other hand that ramp for wheelchair passangers have to be deployed manually. I believe that most american/canadian buses have this ramp deployed electronically (or at least they were in Canada)
Where I work, we have a really old bus from like the 70s and one day, I took a peak through the windshield and realized that the controls are exactly the same as the 2022 buses.
Have a look at Alexander Dennis British made buses they manufacture a lot of busses including Double Deckers which they ship all over the world including Hong Kong , London etc only way I’ve heard of them they have a factory in Scotland close to where I live . Enjoyed your video a lot, fist time I’ve come across your channel 👍
I'm glad to see your RUclips channel which I have just come across. It is interesting to see the comparisons. The bus that you are on looks alright, it does what it needs to do and is accessible for handicapped people. Having the standard lights at the front mean that they are cheaper to replace ratther than the stylised ones of the other buses. The split windscreen as you rightly say also helps to keep expenses for replacement down also. Thank you for this most interesting broadcast.
I ride the short version of that Solaris bus quite frequently as a passenger. It seems to me that is quite "fun to drive" and well handling - the bus drivers are going around corners with this with much more confidence (i.e. quicker) than with the older busses in the fleet. One thing to keep in mind is that the passenger space is very operator specific. The bus I'm riding on frequently has very comfortable padded seats which sadly make the bus quite impractical because they take up a lot of width and so, the aisles get too narrow.
I wish they were faster. They could be if they didn't dwell at stations for so long. Many UK bus networks insist on using vehicles with only 1 door so if you're sitting at the back, you often have to join a slow moving queue to get off, with little space for standees who aren't getting off to move out of your way as all the wheelchair/bike spaces have to be at the front near the only door. This, along with having to queue so the driver can double as a ticket inspector at every single stop creates a bottleneck for passenger movement, adding a lot of time to the journey. There are often no announcements about which bus and rail lines you can catch from which platform at the next stop or even what the next stop is so people often spend extra time finding those kinds of things out from the driver while getting on or off, causing more delay. In most of Europe, buses typically have 2 - 3 doors for regular buses and 3 - 5 doors for bendy buses so getting on and off is usually quite fast to keep things moving. There are also announcements and screens. I hope the UK can switch to that system. I also hope the tickets can be integrated because even daily and weekly tickets are often mode specific and single tickets are often only valid on the first bus you get on instead of an entire single journey using multiple lines and modes. I wish UK local transit a much brighter future.
@@lazrseagull54 And than you have countries (The Netherlands) who had a great ticket system, and decided it had to be 'more fair' and 'more simple' and threw away a good, simple ticket system. We now basically have the same problem as in the UK: though there are tickets that cover a wider area and multiple operators, most tickets you can buy if you do not use a regular smartcard (or don't want to buy it, considering the ridiculous price of 7,50 for the card alone) are operator specific and usually only cover the ride you take. Operator or area specific sounds like it's not such a big deal, but for the average person it's completely impossible to tell where that 'specific area' begins or ends and as some areas now also feature multiple operators that cover all 4 modalities possible (bus, tram, metro and train) under the umbrella-term 'R-NET', it has become a shit-mess of tickets, unfavourable (and hard to understand) T&C's, and especially hard to distinguish which bus one can and can't take (every vehicle under R-NET uses the same red-grey livrey with huge 'R-NET' letters on it, but the operator name is only mentioned very small). Considering the huge price increase sich the smartcard system was made mandatory nationwide in 2011, I still think this is a deliberate thing...
I like how the Urbino IV doesn't try to copy other manufacturers' buses. Look at the new MAN Lion's City and the Scania Citywide. They look so similar.
Guy from Austria here. The electric Mercedes eCitaro buses have been in use for a few years as regional buses that connect a few smaller cities and towns, but recently they are also started being used on a few lines in Vienna. The design stayed pretty much the same as the concept shown in the video, but I think theres no wireless charging possible and also actual seats that are used in the standard Citaros. Oh and all the Mercedes Citaro models (incl. articulated ones) from 2016 onwards have the doors opening sideways to the outside, instead of turning inwards, like the older models used to.
The Merc bus was indeed a advertisement. However, I think you can engineer that stuff to be nigh indestructible. Actually, wireless charging cradles are easier to design vandal-proof than anything with a connector.
The irony is that some NewFlyer busses in the states based of a Dutch Den Oudsten bus design. NewFlyer belonged to Den Oudsten. Volvo owns NovaBus. In the truck sector, a lot of trucks by Freightliner drove with a Mercedes Cab in the 90s. I have used US/ Canadian and European busses (Merc, Setra, Solaris, MAN Büssing) and have to say form follow functions. In the end, the VÖV set the tone in Europe, whilst the National Highway mandated another design. I drove to school with an 90s O405 articulated bus in Germany for over 7 year, which was very worn. So were other busses (Setra S200s), which followed at the same company, until it lost it’s concession. Then another company came with Solaris busses from Poland, which were newer, but soon fell into disrepair. The same company drove me to University for the same time. With older MANs and Solaris. Years later I lived in Mississauga in Canada and I had no other choice to travel with the NewFlyers and NovaBusses. At no point, I felt that North American busses were “old” or “broken”. I used them last year in the GTA again when I came back. I also use busses in the US to get around.
A European bus can’t fold the seats in the front to accomodate wheelchair users. There is only space in the middle with a manual! lifted ramp. In the US, the front entry is wide enough to accomodate most wheelchair models and the ramp is operated by the driver. That’s better. This is also a thing I saw. People claiming that US Busses are too old should go to Prague or Sczeczin and see the vehicles there. Old East Bloc Tatras. Old soviet metros.
@@Canleaf08 I'm sorry, but seeing as a wheelchair user in the Netherlands, (where we mostly use buses from Germany, and less from Belgium, France, Poland and Hungary), there are always tip-up seats (most times 2, 3 or 4) at wheelchair spaces. In fact, I usually have to argue with people sitting on those seats once or twice a month just in order to place my wheelchair on that bus. That's the same for rural and city buses (and I use both) Manual or electric ramps is a bit more complicated. Where I live we have freezing weather at least once a year, electric ramps freeze up and are afterwards a total disaster, I have seen them work properly once (and no, that's not an exaggeration). And that bus was only a month in service. So I prefer manual ramps, at least they get that job done. However in Spain I saw very well working electric ramps. So yeah, if they work that would be great. If they do not work, please use manual.
@@Canleaf08 Idk nothing about Sczeczin but how could u say Prague has old buses? almost all are SOR NB12 (or articulated SOR NB18) and before them they used Irisbus citybus (Renault Agora) (in service ~1996-last in service 2020) which also looks decent in that time. Just search image of them and tell if u find them old and tatra style. With metros. Prague is using 2 types: Siemens ČKD M1 - Which I personaly thinks are really nice even now (created 1998) and renovated 81-71M (from 81-717/714) which looks not great not terrible.
@@Canleaf08 Prague has 100% low floor buses except couple vehicles in retro service. The local transport coordinator has strict rules about vehicle age so the average age of buses is less than 10 years. I don't get the complicated entry through first door. I take my stroller and enter directly from door to dedicated spot, it's only 2 meters away. Yes, ramp for wheelchairs is manual but every bus has kneeling function so the entry point is level with sidewalk (but drivers don't use it as often as should be). Also not many people are morbidly obese here that they would need to use the ramp often. 4 doors in 12 meter bus allow for fast exchange of passengers and that's what matters in busy city.
@@richardvanderlaak826 we definitely have the issue with winters causing door and ramp malfunctions over here as well (at least where I am in Southern Canada). our excessive use of road salt in particular causes corrosion issues too so our buses usually aren't road worthy any more past 18 years.
I haven't seen split windshields on busses placed in regular line service in like 25 years over here in Germany. That is not counting the ones kept for history purposes
Solaris does still make those though even for their 4th gen facelift and I know of at least one company in Germany that uses them. Not quite sure why (maybe cheaper to replace only one half?), but you're right that it's not very common anymore
In Hungary, until the early 2000s, there was a bus manufacturing company called Ikarus, which, in my humble opinion, made one of the best buses of its era. There was a series of 260s and 280s buses, the 260s were solo buses while the 280s were hinged. The options for the 260s were 2 or 3 doors, while the 280s were 3 or 4 doors, and they can be manual or automatic shifters. They had large slide-windows, so you can breathe in summer. No AC was built in. :D The plans and the manufacture begins in the mid '70s, so the solutions they used was from that era. In those days there were no environmental pollution regulations, so they used motors from East Germany and i think from Hungary (IFA, Raba and Csepel). The seats were made from steel pipes, and metal sheets, covered with a foam layer inside an artificial leather - they were the most comfortable seats i ever tried. Their width was more than enough, and they were not installed next to the bus side, there were a gap between the seat and the side panel. There was single and double seats, they were identical. The single seats were on the left side of the bus while the double seats were on the right. They were washable with a watering hose :D Vandalism was often means those days cutting the leather covers of the seats, and made markings on the seats and the inner side of the buses. It was usually on the city buses, while the regional buses were clean. From security prospect: there was an assassination attempt against a group of jew people in the '90s, when a bomb next to the bus expoldes, and all the passengers of the bus survived!
A Polish automotive body builder here, you are right at 2:30. The thing tho is, European Bus windshields are glued to the unibody thus giving the vehicle more structural integrity just like in all modern cars. Glued windshields give the driver also a cleaner view & have better aerodynamics.
One big thing that happens in Romania at least, which I'm not sure is a thing in NA, is that when someone becomes a driver, they are assigned a particular bus and that bus is theirs until they stop working there. This helps many buses stay clean and maintained, because most drivers will take a lot of care to keep their bus pristine. If this happens in NA please tell me!
I can say that I've never experienced that in Britain. I know that some/many coach drivers keep the same vehicle all the time. But I am on local bus services (US=transit buses), and in the course of the day my bus may be driven by four or five different drivers. I will drive two (or occasionally three) different buses in one day. So there are 16 buses on the route, but it takes 37 different drivers to provide the full service from 05:00-23:30
@@michaelgoodwin6565 here, in Romania, there are usually 2 drivers assigned to one bus. From the beginning of the working hours until around 1 PM one driver will be on that bus, then after 1 PM until the end of the work hours the other driver will be on the bus. This helps keep buses in good condition, as the two drivers can maintain it on their own and report any problems very easily
In Singapore bus drivers may not be assigned a specific bus but may be assigned a specific bus service running at specific times for much of their career* (& I think the same is in HK too). So if a bus service is transferred to a different operator I think the drivers running them will automatically be transferred along too. So you'll see the same people driving the same bus services at the same time as before, just wearing different uniforms. When Go-Ahead (from London) entered our country & introduced interlining (where drivers switch between different routes throughout the day) it was found to be more stressful I think, & sparked a mass resignation in 2016 & another bus company had to provide drivers temporarily to avoid bus service cuts. * The same bus is usually used for the same service at the same time of the day every day for a few months before they're rotated around I think. Perhaps they're waiting for the contracts for the ads displayed on some buses to end, which may stipulate which routes the ads are to be displayed on.
9:00 The license plate of the Mercedes-Benz bus (MA-IN 2016) is a legitimate license plate from the place the bus was built: Mannheim, Germany. And in Mannheim, Carl Benz built his first automobile.
It's almost certainly a prototype - fully operational and licensed to run on public roads, but not in serial production. It does look like a variant of the Citaro.
@@V45194 Lets put it like this: The interior is modified, but the shell is actually massproduced and used for the Fuel Cell and the Battery variant of the Citaro series.
Solaris is a Polish company from Bolechowo near Poznań in the region of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland). They started in early 1990s, and make busses, trolley buses and fully electric battery powered busses, as well as trams.
i think it's mostly cause there's little competition in the US regarding public transit busses so brands stick with outdated design cause the cities who need them will purchase them anyway, they won't choose for a Man bus, Volvo bus or BYD bus cause it's not available to them. imagine if there was only 1 car brand, they wouldn't be forced to update their designs cause of competition.
8 месяцев назад
I think there are also regulations in US to limit the manufacturing to US only, so no real competition from overseas manufacturers. Less competition, less needs to innovate and update.
@ yes exactly, but they still had plenty of time to set up manufactures before “build America” came along and pushed all those regulations. I really think there’s not enough public transit need as of right now to make companies move overseas either, this is seen with a lot of stuff like different car models sold globally, stuff for the interior of your house, europe has much more modern appliances for cooking of the same brand that aren’t sold in the US. I know this is very random, but the way money is spend in the US has a lot of influence on this, in europe they like to spend good money on quality, modern and luxurious buses cause it improves the quality of life, in the US most things are done as cheaply as possible like renovations, repairs to things, road projects, infrastructure and also buses.
@@mediocreman2 cause they’re not doing anything to help the homeless nor do they discourage driving to make taking the bus more attractive. Other countries have done it, but ofc these cities lack courage
I live near Solaris headquarters and we have a lot of these buses in the city of Poznań, Poland. The Urbino IV is my favourite bus, very comfortable (especially the electric one) and they look great. Most of them are diesel but there are more and more electric ones as well as some with hydrogen fuel cells.
Great video ! Just a quick notice: the Mercedes bus at the end was just a prototype, since then they made a "real world" version, the eCitaro, which kept most of the exterior design mixed with what Mercedes was already making (the Citaro C2) for everything else. If you want to see European city buses in North America it's actually possible: there are VanHool city buses in the SF Bay Area (Oakland) running for AC Transit, as well in Canada around Toronto (running for York Region Transit). They've been slightly adapted for North America but kept most of their original features ! I know that a Mercedes Citaro was once tested in NYC and an Irisbus Citelis in Montreal, Canada, both many years ago, but both got rejected sadly.
also ADL Enviro 500's are around in some places in the states and Canada, there were also some older enviro200's and ALX200's i believe but i'm not sure if they're still in service
I never thought i will find a bus review from a real professional, I didn’t know it is so interesting to listen to! Thank you, sir! Wish you health and strength!
I personally don't think the buses in America look that out dated and boring. Either way, It doesn't really matter how your buses look. What does matter is the riding (and/or driving) experience and reliablity of said buses.
I respect your opt and everyone has their own tastes but a lot of North American busses like proterra gilling and even artic electric new flyers have had many issues with agencies often having to send them back to factories to repair them. Also doesn’t make sense how all North American “low flow” busses are only 70% low flow (there’s stairs at the back) while in europe and the rest of the world it’s 100% low floor
Also the fact that a lot of European and Asian busses have 3 doors for more capacity but North American ones have only two, even only one sometimes (novabus suburban edition)
I agree for the most part. Aesthetic details matter a lot less than they would on cars and I’d rather have a bus that shows up every time. I do think that the overall design has some influence-a clean, modern-looking bus might attract more ridership than a utilitarian box would. In my opinion, New Flyer and BYD are doing pretty good on the exterior department.
Sorry, but what your are saying is like "oh, we don't need to improve our cars, the 20 years old ones are doing good, let us build just those"... Really?!
@TomTom-ik8dm That's not what Josh is saying; his point is that functionality matters more than aesthetics in a bus. Nobody is saying that buses shouldn't improve. They have, and they will.
Love the video! I can agree on this, I work for GO Transit in toronto, ontario, we have MCIs and Alexander Dennis Double deckers buses built in the UK, and the main difference i find in them and European buses is the drivers area is much more spacious and open than the American counterparts
As someone who drives Alexander Dennis buses in the UK, and has been onboard one of your lovely GO Enviro 500's and had a peek at the cab, I think the 500's cab is slightly larger and of the same sort of design as our newer buses that started being made 2016 onwards, they have a much nicer cab design. Some of our older ones (2010) have a very bad design for leg room in the cab, so your left leg ends up getting cramp. If you want to see what I put up with (albeit the opposite way round) go up to Collingwood where the CTA uses Alexander Dennis Enviro 200 and NewFlyer MiDi (same bus different production facility) extensively.
Brit here, living in S.E Asia: I had no idea Canada had British buses! Alexander Dennis, no less lol. They were quite popular in Hong Kong and Singapore too, going back decades. In Honkers and Singapore, they were fitted with extra-large capacity locally-made bodies, able to carry well over a hundred people!
@@swanvictor887 Yup! The Enviro500 is used by a few transit operators here in Canada, majority are tourist buses, and for GO Transit they are suburban styled with 1 door and coach bus styled seats
In Belgrade where I live we have Isuzu CityPort, Mercedes Benz Citaro 2018(i think) articulated and regular and Solaris Urbino 18. Of the three the Urbinos have to be the best. Solaris really has a good idea of how a bus should function, look and be made. CityPort is losing those drop-down seats, and the front is getting plummeted by the pot holes. The Citaro I personally didn't still get to work on so all I can say is yay for all-round USB charging.
@@AndrejaKostic There are a few articulated that run daily still. Mostly the last series that was basically MAN. From solos, the "Mercedes" are still running plus a few older models. And I think I saw the original low floor articulated bus that was on BeoTruck fair like 15 years ago a few months ago running.
Check out italian city busses... They are their own world too, also very modern as their trains. We have mostly Mercedes Citaro or Man busses here (Croatia & Slovenia)
What are really bad are the El Dorado busses we have in Marin. We use them to get over the hills to the coast. They look like they are from the 70's and they are always breaking down.
I’ll note gillig offers single piece windows but few agencies order them. Van hools were a weird phase for AC transit Solaris has said they are going to enter the NA market but we will see.
Yeah I have seen a Gillig before with the single glass windshield..it looked pretty cool. I forgot which agency though. I’ve seen the van hools..I’m not a fan of how they look. It will be interesting to possibly see an American version of a Solaris bus!
Van Hool is pretty interesting. In North America they have a reputation for being expensive and premium. But in Europe it couldn't be further opposite. Here across the pond, Van Hool's reputation is being some of the cheapest, lowest quality garbage ever manufacturered on the continent. They are not very well liked around here. Heck in Denmark, Tide Bus, who got the contract to operate all urban buses in the city of Aalborg, ordered 67 electric buses from Van Hool, alongside 40 from the Chinese manufacturer Golden Dragon. The latter has a sceptical reliability record but some contractors kept ordering their buses because they were dirt cheap. However the Van Hools have been even less reliable than the Golden Dragon buses. And Ive heard this directly from drivers who worked for Tide bus in Aalborg who have since quit and gotten new jobs at other contractors. Apparently the management at Tide was crappy too, completely inconsiderate of the actual needs of drivers or the realisms of what it takes to make the buses run reliably and on time. All they cared about was minimizing costs, and shovelling public money into their hands to get a good profit margin from their public contract.
I'm from Berlin Germany, we had busses with a modern electric ramp. Often it was broken, so to return to a simple, mechanical solution, that is reliable, was progressive.
10:26 To the Mercedes. Its was a show case bus. So it was never intented to be used in real traffic. They wanted to show what was theoreticly the possible future
5:56 this bus is from Brno (Czech Republic) I rode it just yesterday, It's my favorite out of all the buses in Brno. It's clean and there's a lot of seats and standing room. There are also a few USB ports so you can charge your phone.
Having family in both continents, Ive been on buses in many different European cities. I too prefer European designs. That’s probably why the New Flyer Xcelsiors are my favourite North American buses. I prefer European buses with their modern and sleek designs, and their interiors are often a lot much nicer on the inside. I also like how most buses in Europe have windows in the back.
Same here in Germany. If you want to take your bike with you, better pray the reserved space inside the bus opposite of the rear doors is actually empty, otherwise you might as well not even bother to get on
@@Knaeckebrotsaege In Singapore meanwhile people are already making noise at tourists who take our commuter buses (mostly CItaros) from the airport to downtown, complaining that their luggage takes up more space & that they're too stingy to take a taxi. Think that's the only bus that goes downtown (our gov't probably would never introduce a coach service as it might canibalize ridership from our airport train line (which is built to metro standard, so lots of space but not much seats). Furthemore both these buses & trains stop at suburbs along the way & can thus get crowded further down the route
Colleague, I am also a bus driver in Germany. 20 years in long-distance travel and now city transport. I currently drive a Mercedes Benz Citaro C3 articulated bus. Compared to its interior, what you have in the bus is more like 1980 but not 2015. The tachograph alone is no longer installed here in Germany. and I always wanted to take a bus to the USA. But when I look at these boxes now, I gratefully forego it
I always love to look at this kind of video's. I take the bus very often, so it's interesting to see a few American buses too. In the Netherlands, the new VDL Citea Electric and Volvo 7900 Electric joined the fleet since the end of 2023. These buses are driving next to the classic (old) VDL Ambassador, IVECO Crossway, MAN Lions city and Mercedes Benz Citaro diesel buses (amongst others). It may be interesting to look at those oldies too. Furthermore, have a nice day!
I always wondered why do American buses have the steering wheel almost perfectly perpendicular to the ground, whereas in Europe the steering wheel is a bit more inclined towards the driver which seems to be more comfortable for the driver. Is the American version easier to steer requiring less force to turn or is there a different reason for it?
less steering is needed in the US because the roads are more straight, usually in a grid system. European roads are usually narrow and winding, so lots of steering input is required from the driver.
The shells are also adjustable, and often are more tilted in operation…but tilted up when the driver gets in/out to make maneuvering easier. It’s also super common on older busses for operators to just swap steering wheels around between coaches when one needs a repair. I’ve seen lots of Gillig wheels on NFI busses, for example.
You don't have to go cross an ocean to see a Euro bus, you only have to cross the causeway. Unitrans in Davis runs Alexander Dennis Envro 500s (from the UK, though more common in Hong Kong), which are a touch dated now (from 2002) but look pretty cool. But also they are double deckers, which is cool as hell. (They also run some old london RT series double deckers from the early 50s) There's also a bunch of them in Vegas, but that's not a 20min drive.
Several Bay Area agencies operate double decker busses, along with Foothill Transit in SoCal. Further north, Community Transit in the Seattle area uses “Double Talls” (because coffee!) on their commuter routes along with some contracted Sound Transit routes.
Nice video 🙂 The Mercedes bus from 9.00-10.30 has actually been test driving for handsfree driving some 1,5 year ago in the Netherlands (where the video you showed was taken) with real passengers. This was filmed on the Connexxion 300 line from Haarlem via Hoofddorp, Schiphol Airport to Amsterdam. You see some shots in Hoofddorp and in the tunnel under the airport. I've no idea how the test finally ended, but line 300 stil has real people driving it uptill now 🙂. Line 300 is a high speed line, mostly on a dedicated busroad with priority over crossing trafic. Keep up the good work 👍
Brilliant channel. What i drove back in 1988 are Leyland Atlanteans in Busways Newcastle livery of Mustard and Burgundy, i still work for the same company 36 years later but we are now called Stagecoach busways in Newcastle and i now drive predominantly double deck Alexander Dennis MMC low floor vehicles of which the company changed its livery about 4 years ago and we now look a little more modern. In all these years i have seen great advancements in vehicle safety including retarders in the transmission, disc brakes front and rear, air suspension, ABS braking systems and recently Radar cruise control but this is only on intercity long distance coaches and not local scheduled services. After watching a few of your videos i have to admit that North American buses do look a bit dared especially in the cab with all the random switchgear and individual gauges, our latest buses which are about two years old now have seperate switches for interior lights etc but the dashboard is very much like a car with lcd screens for info and warning lights and also integrated speedo and tacho. Sorry i'm rambling but good luck with your channel from a long time Northeast UK bus driver. 👍
I've always liked the looks of Solaris buses especially. They are owned by or affiliated with CAF now, and actually trying to get into the North American market from what I'm aware. You probably saw their booth at the APTA Expo. A Solaris Trollino (trolleybus) was also operated as a demo unit in Vancouver, BC for a short period last year. Also I agree, the M-B Citaro shown certainly looks cool and stylish, but no way that would hold up in regular service here. That's sort of an issue with some of the European designs in general, they would need modifications to meet safety and crash standards here and also better suspension ans perhaps more powerful powertrains for the different driving standards.
Aside from complying with the (outdated) more stringent safety and crash standards, why do you think they'd need to have their suspension modified or a different powertrain? Citaros are used all around Europe in all kinds of climate and geography, and either in urban or intercity configuration they're reliable (and that's why they are so popular)
@@MathiasBruno The Citaro model specifically would probably be fine aside from perhaps adding ugly US standard bumpers. If for diesel a Cummins engine isn't already offered they might need to add that as well depending on transit agency preference. I'm thinking more of the suspension modifications Alexander-Dennis had to specifically make with their Enviro200 before selling it here, or the poor ride quality of a Van Hool AG300 compared to a New Flyer D60LFR.
@@mrvwbug4423 Really about of poor quality of CAF trains... old brands who worked here in Spain (Macosa, f.e.) had built better products (nowadays, there are some 440s and 592s series riding yet at Spanish railways, and there were built at 70s and 80s). And old models of CAF were better built than now. But if you want worse products, you can take AnsaldoBreda train (at Madrid underground there riding with 7000 and 9000 series and their quality is awful -compare with 2000 and 5000 series, older than these trains but better built-). Best greetings from Spain!!!
Cool video. I'm glad you like the Polish Solaris Urbino 18 bus. Currently, it is probably the most popular city bus in Poland, it is also popular in other European countries. In Poland, buses must also be resistant to vandals. Solaris takes this into account. I like Solaris, but for me the best bus of all time is the Hungarian Ikarus 280, popular in all socialist countries, there were also versions for the North American market.
wdym vandals? it's as if there were more vandals in Poland than in the rest of EU which is not the case. Most of the buses in my city in Poland have generally been in great shape.
I love the Alexander Dennis Enviro line (The newest version has big windows on it stairs to the second level inspired by the New Routemaster) and the Volvo B9TL (the version with the curved top and bottom front windshield). Both has low floor, easily accessible wheelchair ramp for the driver to deploy, good seating layout, and are spacious even at full capacity.
I think it has a lot to do with volume and competition. There's a huge market for premium busses in Asia and Europe: Mercedes alone sold 26,168 busses last year, around 3,000 of which were electric. I couldn't find numbers for north america, but gillig had a big press release about selling 100 electric busses *total*. The economies of scale are just totally different. But the US can't take advantage of that because it wants to protect the local manufacturers at the cost of riders and drivers.
I think the issue is NA is car centric and bus for the “poor arse” commoners, the city councils just not funding bus service to a high enough level to make it make sense, plus the residential area is so spread out... ain't no one gonna walk in weather for up to an hour to that bus stop which might not have regular service ...
German here. The 3. Generation of the Mercedes-Benz Citaro, the Citaro E is based on the same platform like the over 20 years old Citaro 1. gen. Mercedes just face lift it and put an electric Motor in it. What you see in the promo Video is just an "Idea" but the reality is, he looks the same like every other Citaro. Put that in title in RUclips, there is a little Video from the BVG (Berlin public transport) from a Citaro E: Bus 194 Berlin mitfahrt von Marzahn nach Wönnichstr. mit den Mercedes Benz eCitaro | ÖPNV Berlin
Here in Tallinn, Estonia we have a lot of these Solaris busses. I would say most of them are that kind, there is a also a shorter version of the same bus that also goes around.
Makes me realise how mush we take our buses for granted here in Germany. The oddest part of the US bus for me is that the disabled/pushchair section isn't build around the rear door, so people with wheelchairs or pushchairs have to negotiate all the other seats.
In Britain, the disabled and pushchair area is usually near the front of the bus, behind the front wheels and in front of most of the seats (many buses outside London only have a front door). This enables the driver to deploy the passenger ramp when needed for wheelchairs to board/alight.
@@jerry2357 I really dislike the whole 1 door thing in the UK and every time I visit, I'm sad to see it still hasn't been abolished. At least put it at the middle of the bus or something. If you're sitting at the back and need to get off at a busy stop, you have to join a slow queue spanning the length of the whole bus and because all the wheelchair/bike spaces have to be all the way at the front, standees have nowhere to move out of your way, adding a lot of time to the journey at each stop. Drivers in the rest of Europe just get out and walk to the middle door where they can manually operate the ramp, which just takes a couple of seconds. Having 3 - 5 doors is a lot less stressful for claustrophobic people.
In the US, ADA seating is almost always at the front of the coach, with the wheelchair ramp integrated into three front door. This ensures someone boarding in a wheelchair can still pay at the farebox as they board, and makes it far easier for the driver to align and deploy the ramp in the first place - especially at stops where the coach doesn’t have space to pull entirely flush with the curb.
Yeah they have very easy access through the front door because the bus kneels and disabled seating is near the driver. You want disabled passengers close to the driver in case they need assistance, are hard of hearing, etc.
@@jerry2357 I grew up in the UK and lived in Germany for the last 20 years. Of course things probably have changed in that time, but coming to Germany and finding space for wheelchairs and pushchairs on buses was a revelation.
I drive a 44 foot Volvo transit bus in my native Holland. I like your MCI Greyhound buses, very quiet and comfortable. The one thing I hate about US spec buses is the flat glass rearview mirrors, you don't see a damn thing. Most new buses now come with camera mirrors in Europe. Keep up the good work brother 😊
european living in netherlands here: took a trip to oregon last year and I LOVE your busses. you have bike racks on the bumper that's the coolest sh*t I ever saw
I like this video very much. I live in central Europe, in Slovakia. The Solaris bus, which is made in Poland, is very common around here, so as Czech-made SOR and italian Ivecos. These three marks are most common in the central Europe and are considerwd as a low-cost buses. Anyways, the modern ones look prety much modern and somewhat comfortable. Speaking about the driver's place: these three has all the same place, like you can see in that Solaris. And I have to say that the dashboard of your American bus reminds me the dashboard of a hungarian Ikarus 280 from the 1970's (google it 😂 ). Amd of course, the Mercedes in this video is something just for a presentation. Actual West-eurupean made buses, like, e.g. Mercedes, Man, Setra, VanHool, looks pretty much similar to the Solaris, but thay are made just from the more quality materials, and so. If you like to compare 2015 bus from Mercedes, try looking at, for example Mercedes O530 CapaCity, which is a 19,5m long city bus with a design, that I personally really love.
In Paris, we have some cool new bus models. One model has very high ceiling which make the inside so airy with big windows. Another bus model has a extreme long wheelbase and extreme short front and back overhangs. That bus able to turn due to sophisticated 4 wheel steering. In the future, I hope you can do some videos on Parisian buses!
Thanks, Kewan. Seems like European specs have fewer seats and many more doors. Wonder if their riders are "less distructive." 😂
Yes I wonder about the destruction as well! 😂
@@BusDriverLife Hello there! I would like to recommend you to check out the link above (my channel), as I review public transit buses (Sonoma County Transit) in Northern California. Thank you!
You can never predict traffic, so do not blame the drivers only.
@@BusDriverLife So You are driving vandals (no hope in humanity)?
It's all about getting in and out fast. I guess it has something to do with the fact that Europian cities are pretty densely populated and the suburbs are not as far away from schools, work places and grocery stores. The travel time might be shorter on average than in the US, which lessens the need for seats. People also often jump in for a couple of stops to shorten the walk in eg. city centers. So there's more need for standing places in that kind of areas.
hey, i just wanna say, no matter what equipment you use, your job is essential for modern city life, love directly from a european bus rider
Thank you!!
Well said brother. Respect to all public transit workers out there 🫡
@@BusDriverLifeMaybe check out some double articulated buses from Europe and you could also take a look, how buses used to look like 20-30-40 years ago here.
I couldn't agree more. And it shocks me to see how few people actually greet the driver when entering through the front door. I do, but at least in the part of Germany where I live it doesn't seem to be common. I wonder what's so hard about giving them some appreciation for the important work they do by smiling at them and saying hi. It's not gonna hurt, I promise!
Well said !
European bus side mirrors hang from the top allowing the driver to see pedestrians in the crosswalk when turning. In North America the side mirrors are mounted low and pedestrians get killed by turning buses. I just missed getting hit by a turning bus.
I think North American buses designs aren't updated because public transit in the North America is regarded as a cheap service for the poor only. So the only goal is to make it cheap, and cheap to repair when vandalised. On the other hand public transit in European cities is used by every class of society, and often is even one of the icons of a city. For example London's iconic red buses or the underground. So look matters.
Nope, it’s because of procurement rules. Look up the RMtransit video “why American buses are just worse”
I think the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality that so many Americans seem to almost religiously adhere to plays a large part in buses, trucks and cars not really being updated. Many Americans seem to prefer large buttons, levers, analog dials etc over more modern buttons and displays just for that reason.
@@tjroelsma That's just interface you're describing. The physical buttons are way safer than having everything including climate control in a screen.
Public transport in the USA is for poor people only...
in Europe its for all people!
@@richman2601 I'm mentioning both BUTTONS and screens, so it looks like you're missing my point.
As a former European trucker who drove for some years in the US in US trucks put it:
- switches in US trucks need to be almost an inch long and a quarter inch wide or the trucker can't find them.
- everything needs its own dedicated chrome lined dial mounted in a wooden dashboard because that looks cool.
-switches are mostly lined up in rows without seemingly making much sense.
European and Asian trucks are built with an ergonomically efficient environment in mind. Switches are grouped in dedicated blocks, with the most used ones close to the driver, because that makes more sense than just a couple of rows of switches in random sequences. Mercedes is even going as far as having related buttons grouped in blocks of 4 that can be popped out and changed in positioning on the dash, depending on what the driver finds more practical for his specific use.
Dials have been mostly done away with because the screens will show the driver all the important and/or relevant information and the ECU will pop up an alert and display the less important information if something goes wrong.
The whole philosophy of modern European and Asian trucks is to de-clutter the dashboard and let the driver focus on his/her main task more: driving a large commercial vehicle safely through dense traffic. Just the occasional glance at the dashboard screen will show the driver that the vehicle is still okay, has enough fuel and air pressure etc. The screen will show an alert, mostly by a flashing yellow/orange line around the edge when something starts misfunctioning and that alert will flash red when the misfunctioning becomes dangerous.
I'm a part time bus driver in Germany and I have driven the production version of the Citaro-e. We only have one of these as a test for the bus company, but it's really nice.
It doesn't drive itself, that's just a gimmick and it has a proper bus interior designed for people to use. No different than the regular Citaro C2 and C2 hybrid.
The cockpit area is amazing. It's very comfortable, ergonomic, practical and elegant with no weird switches, or dials that look out of place. The electric Citaro-e is just quieter.
The standard Citaro is quiet, unlike MAN and Solaris, where you get a headache after a shift from all the noise. In a Citaro, I feel like I could drive from one end to Europe to the other and still feel good. And Citaros have so many luxury features. Seriously, the Citaros, or at least the ones at my company have - heated and ventilated seats, radar cruise control, blind spot monitoring, brake assist, rear camera, A/C and a radio with bluetooth functionality for calls, or music. In a city bus...
I'm Bulgarian and when I grew up in the 90s, buses were these loud and obnoxious things, spewing clouds of black smoke, very cold in the winter, very hot in the summer, uncomfortable and the drivers had nothing. Hell, damn things were manual, so the drivers had to change gear constantly.
Mercedes Benz make the best cars, best vans and best buses. As for trucks, sorry... I'm a Benz guy, but that title goes to Scania. (ex part-time truck driver... Scania rocks)
when i am in bangkok i sometimes use the public bus. it is fun. usually tourists do not use them. but they are very cheap and it is fun. of course and extreme loud diesel engine that shakes the whole bus, many decades old and a black cloud coming out in the back.
i hope they will switch to quiet electric busses soon. bangkok is so loud
Are you refering to the last Mercedes one? I didn't know Citaro was their branch, if I understood correctly. But unfortunately, here in Greece we get all the discarded ones from Germany and Austria. Those buses are past their lifespan and get very little if any maintenance. There are even all the info stickers written in german still (which noone here speaks it). Unfortunately for those reasons I don't like them at all as a rider (sorry for not knowing the model names), however MAN is a better experience
Well here in Limassol Cyprus the most recent ones were brought a year ago and are from a brand called King Long
@@ΌνομαΕπώνυμο-ο1τ
I'm Bulgarian. It's the same deal in Bulgaria, old, retired buses from Germany and Austria. MAN, Mercedes, Neoplan, Vanhool and in the more obscure villages you can still find soviet junk like the Icarus, Laz, Chavdar and some I've never heard of.
I hate using public transport, so I don't. I use my car, or a taxi.
@@ΌνομαΕπώνυμο-ο1τi mean if they handle all the abuse they're put through it shows that they are very tough buses and can handle terrible maintenance and whatnot. old european buses are probably like what the gm fishbowls here in north america were. you could run them in service for over 30 years without much going wrong.
I don’t know why i clicked on this, or why i found it so interesting and wholesome, i just did. Good job, big love from England
I’m so glad you clicked on the video! I appreciate you!
As a European I found the City busses in the US odd. As a passenger I took a minute to realize what the cables along the windows are for (we have buttons every other row that can easily be reached by passengers sitting and passengers standing in the aisle). One feature I wish we could get in Europe are the bike racks on the front. On most transit systems you can't take bikes on busses. Very few systems have bike trailers, but for those the driver has to leave his seat and walk back the whole length of the bus.
Those strings were still on a few vuses in Sweden im the 90ties, not seen em in Europe since.
Then I came to the US and it was like traveling back in time.
In poland you can take a bicycle wirh you, bit you have to pay a ticket for it since it takes a lot of space
I believe it's much better to be able to actually take your bicycle with you inside of a bus. Unfortunately most busses don't allow for this (but there are some city busses that do!). Bus evolution should head in this direction in my opinion, even for busses that serve rural regions.
@@dnocturn84 the spaces inside the busses are usually needed by wheelchair users and strollers.
Depending on the numbers of passengers commuter busses in Denmark allow you to take a bicycle with you. For free. Though space is limited and need to be shared with baby carriages and wheelchairs. There are a maximum of two in each bus. The express busses only allow for bicycles outside of peak hours.
Bikes are also allowed on commuter trains (S-Trains) with few restrictions, in the Copenhagen area. It’s allowed in the metro in of peak hours. On regional trains, a reservation of close to $ 3 is required - 4 bicycles is allowed on each train.
Did you notice the extra doors on Euro buses? This allows faster access & egress, thus shorter dwelling at stops, and a faster ride overall for the passengers.
I think in Germany the less doors versions are more common
In the town I where I work they changed the city bus operator and with that they replaced the the 3-Door busses with 2-Door ones and it makes a huge difference.
In Prague we have 4 door buses in regular length for city service and the 2 door buses are for longer lines beyond city limits where people should enter only through front door.
Some London double decker's have 4 doors
@@keahnig164 yes, but I noticed that many more cities are switching to 12 long m with 3 doors amd 18 long m with 4 doors even in germany :)
Have you ever noticed how the buses and trucks in the European markets look so much sleeker than the ones we have here? I mean, just take a look at those headlights - they're on a whole other level!
I agree
I love them and I have a folder about them
come take a ride! (at folder 4) :))
🚅🚈🚞🚝🚂🚃🚄
trains, trams, aren't they all beautifull
Headlight technology in the United States lags behind the rest of the developed World due to antiquated laws. We're lucky we are no longer stuck with round sealed beam headlights. My European car, a German make has very sophisticated headlights but for this market the software to drive the matrix features are turned off. We are stuck with crap headlight technology since our government won't allow us to have nice things.
the more modern headlights are adb. these only been allowed since 2022 in the us. i think thats the reason non us headlights looked so much better in the past.
The matrix lights on Audi models in the United States are still crippled by software. I know that some have altered that to give full capability. My dealer naturally is playing dumb. Mine is a 2024 model. It does have laser high beams that work way outside of the city, but the partial blocking of light for oncoming traffic does not work. @@anneliese187
Nice to see that #2684 Solaris bus from my city (Brno, Czech Republic) in your video. It was filmed in Medlanky depot which is shared with trams, you can see one of the Skoda 13T trams there plus also few Dekstra minibuses based on Iveco Daily van for less busy bus lines. Keep up the great work...
Solaris is a Polish bus.
Solaris is a Polish bus producer. And the footage of self-driving Mercedes comes from tests conducted on a BRT line previously called the Zuidtangent that connects Amsterdam with Schiphol and Haarlem. As a Pole living in The Netherlands, I thank you for this video 🙂
Solaris is a Polish company where when you order a bus you wait up to two years for delivery. The company where I work has 200 11-year-old Solaris buses. There are 100 in the garage where I work. Solaris delivers buses with different engines, Mercedes, MAN, DAF. And equipment inside for the drivers. They also have electric buses with different battery capacities and they don't have external mirrors, but in the driver's cabin on the display.
Solaris makes good buses. They are part of the Spanish company CAF.
Solaris is dogshit, the quality and replacement-parts wait are horrendous. In my area the identical Bus runs as in the Video just with different doors and seats, and compared to our Citaro and Lion's City busses, and even the Ivecos, they absolutely suck
@@heybenjii5544 really? That saddens me as a polish person, ive always been proud of the success of this company, its one of the most famous polish companies
@@foxy126pl6 Yes, really. And not only that. A friend of mine had to take buses on the way to work only and the operating company uses Solaris city buses only. These are so cheaply made, everything looks cheap and the hard plastic cracks everywhere. The seats are so thin and uncomfortable and have absolutely no room for tall people. You might think that the buses are only designed for small people. And the worst thing: The buses have no real suspension in the chassis at all. Driving is like driving with an old truck. That's unpossible at a passenger city bus with all the bad roads everywhere. This led to the friend no longer taking the buses and canceling his annual ticket. Now he rides with bike, which suits him better and gets him to work quicker because he can ride directly without having to take a detour, like the buses have to.
Buyers can choose everything they want from the buses, but everything is still cheaply made and has no quality; that's absolutely unpossible. Best regards from Germany...
@@citroen-fan i see, but in my expirience the turkish mercedes buses are much more rattly than the solaris buses, at least here in Poland. I remember mercedes buses leaking water inside and the glass next to doors vibrating on every bump. And the seats are significantly better on solaris. Maybe the domestic market ones are better made? My city operates both solaris urbino and mercedes connecto.
I went to Europe for the first time about 3 months ago. A lot of their stuff over there is much more technologically advanced then here. Their busses are out of this world. But even there airports are better than here in the US
and their planes don't lose stuff mid-flight
Surprisingly, I had no problem with orienting at big English speaking airports (Heathrow and O'Hare) which I visited for first time in my life, but I got lost at main airport of my country (Vaclav Havel Airport) where everything is in my language. People say it's well marked but somehow it didn't worked for me. O'Hare was way easier to walk through even after like 24 hours of being awake (with 5 hours of sleep before), compared to one in Prague after quite good sleep at first plane.
It seems to me that it is because we Europeans love to compete with each other. Or at least keep up 😅😅
@@eljanrimsa5843tell a lie
just a week ago an airline from my country lost a blind cat during an international flight
it was travelling in the cargo compartment
If you like airports you'll love Singapore Changi Airport. Even Kuala Lumpur International Airport is good. Then we Australians come home and wake up from the dream.
The Isuzu bus is actually designed and built in Turkey (by Anadolu Isuzu). They make low-cost buses mostly for the Central/Eastern European and Middle Eastern markets.
Yeah. Though they're spreading to more places. The Citivolt shown in the video has been sold to a few customers in Denmark now, and Denmark's largest bus importer, VBI Group has struck a deal with Isuzu to sell their electric buses here. They already had a partnership to sell Isuzu's Visigo midi-coaches, but this just expanded it. And VBI Group is no joke for the market here. They also have a bigger partnership with Iveco and Iveco Crossway buses sold through VBI group dominated all of Denmark in the 2010's.
Generally speaking most of the busses, trams, trolleybuses in Europe are from Turkey. I live in Novi Sad, Serbia and our city busses are Turkish BMC busses on natural gas and Polish Solaris electric busses. Timișoara uses Turkish made trams. Turkish automotive products maybe have lower prices but they are state of the art.
@@bnast6849 It depends very much on region and which country you're in, it can vary a lot just from country to country. Like in Denmark where I'm from, most new buses are either Chinese, German, or Dutch. And before the electric boom, Czech built Iveco buses were extremely popular, and before that Swedish/Polish Scania and Volvo buses.
Great info! That’s interesting!!
@@drdewott9154 We used to have Volvo and Mercedes before the city opted for more greener fuels mainly LNG and electric. To be honest, I love diesel engines but I prefer to live in a city where public transport has least harmful emissions possible.
Here in Brazil we have something called "Encarroçadoras" which are companies that build the body and interior, like Marcopolo, Caio, Busscar... Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Scania, Volvo, etc, just build the chassis frame, suspension and engine.
Then is possible with the same structure bellow, have multiple bodies and interiors, each one different from the other.
Solaris is a bus from Poland. It is used in many countries. With various drives, from hydrogen through electric to diesel. We also make excellent trams and trains.
That driver seat area at 4:20 reminds me very much of how German buses looked like in the 1970´s or 1980´s ...
P.S.: I´m German (driving trucks but not buses ...) but I can still rember that buses looked like that during my school days - using regular local buses to commute between home and school.
In Germany there´s never been such a thing like special school only buses as in the US.
Only in a few cases regular buses are used for special school routes (that usually still can be used by anyone else if the routing fits their needs ...)
... and that interior of a 2015 bus seems extremely basic offering effectively no comfort for passengers aside from being able to sit down "somehow".
The Solaris articulated bus shown is a modern but still somewhat "cheap" (=reduced to the minimum requirements).
MAN/Mercedes/Volvo/Scania/Iveco are more expensive but offer better riding comfort for passengers and drivers.
That Mercedes at the end of this vid is just an idea of what future buses - could - be like.
I live and work near the Mercedes bus factory in Mannheim/Germany and I have never seen this particular bus driving around here.
It´s obviously a one-off featuring all ideas that could be implemented into future serial production. This bus is just a show case.
But believe me buses here in Germany are way more comfortable for passengers to ride and drivers to operate than those in the US.
British RE,s from the late 60s looked like that
Sind halt ranzig
USA generally has much worse public transport coverage than Europe, which is why American schools have to use their own buses to get children to school in the morning and back home in the afternoon. Whereas in Europe, children usually just take a normal bus or train within the public transport system.
@@lolookie1682then you have places like Australia. Most places here have dedicated school bus routes, but they’re serviced by the local public city bus company. The school buses are the same as every other bus on the road, it’s just only school students are allowed on dedicated school routes.
i have the same thoughts.
i only drive Firetrucks, even our oldest firetruck (30 years old) have a better seat area,
Here in Switzerland we have lots of bi-articulated trolleybuses from HESS, a local manufacturer. They are 25 meters long (about 80 feet). These are really fun to watch, especially in a tight curve. If you aren't used to them, you see the second section and think that's the end, only for even more bus to show up. The newer models have a huge rear window, so the best seats are at the back of these buses. You can look backwards to see everything behind the bus or look forwards to get a view of the extra bendy interior.
yes, i drive trams in Zürich and its fun to see peoples reactions when a HESS dives into a stop and its almost as long as the old Tram 2000
Thats why they are called Ligh Tram 😊
Yeah, I was really hoping he would react to a LighTram! Swiss public transport for the win haha
Solingen in Germany has a good number of those as well.
in North America roads are mostly straight, there is little need for that :)
the mercedes one was a concept from a few years ago. the production version is called eCitaro. we have a few of them here in norway. really nice and comfortable to ride on.
The Mercedes Benz was a test or pilot running a few years on a bustraject in the Netherlands. I have seen I in action thinking, how much will we see in the real model.
we're getting 92 of them in my city, the first 10-20 are already on the road. they look great and smooth to ride on
@@karevilenwhich city?
@@austriankangarooDen Haag
@@karevilen Lets make it 95. 58 18m and 37 12m. First 12m will arrive 3th week of april the first 18m will arrive in may. Going to be used as first to train there employes and in september to december the rest will arrive and then they are going to be used.
From this side of the pond, I totally agree.
Public transportation in Europe (trains, Metros and Buses), are nicer,more comfortable, and cleaner.
Vandalized buses? Do people vandalize their own homes?
After all, public transportation vehicles belong to the people.
Paid for by their taxes! Fixing things up requires more tax-money,
Solaris is a company based in Poland, with quite an amazing history. Their buses can be seen in most of the Polish cities now. They do have an effective international market strategy, so I can see the buses in Brussels, and I have seen them in some French cities. Now that company was a family company, set up in 1990s by an engineer who worked at Neoplan in Germany, then he imported Neoplan buses to Poland, and on that foundation he built a company of his own. He ran it successfully, together with his wife till their retirement age, and they sold the company to Spanish CAF. The model shown in the video is very popular in Poland, and it is not the most recent one, more of a workhorse, here shown in Wroclaw, probably for the Czech market. Please do feel invited to Poland, if there are commercial and testing visits, there might be export to America perhaps. Also, ten years is a long time, but it's true even the modernised driver’s post is not really too modern.
They are here in Denmark too, similar model
We have a lot of Solaris city buses and trolleybuses in Riga, Latvia. I ride them every day and they're great. 👍
I think you'll find this was filmed in Brno
We have many Solaris in Greece!
Solaris buses are popular not only in France and Belgium but all around Europe!
5:56 That is actually Brno in the Czech Republic, so its not just for the Turkish market
These buses usually serve line 44 and 84 in Brno, but they can also do 50 and E50, but those are usually sovered by Urbino 3rd generation buses.
The Isuzu is for Turkish market. The Solaris, as you say was filmed and is run in Brno, Czechia. 😉
@@CzHanz So a Japanese company produces busses since 1937 for Turkey only?
@@mrsimpleslowmo might be a sub-contractor under the name and supervision of isuzu
@@mrsimpleslowmo nope. I suppose they produce buses for many countries, but that particular one probably has specific features, unique to Turkey?
6:18 Solaris Urbino 18! Solaris is a company form Poland! And actually we in Poland love those busses! But this is a Czech version. In Warsaw we have cloth like chairs, not plastic. :)
True. This one is from Brno in Czechia (DPMB - Brno public transport company). These plastic seats are easier for cleaning, but when driver turns faster, you can slide off :) DPMB is specific with its big workshop, so they buy these buses without motors and assemble electrical motor and trolley sets in it. like this one ruclips.net/video/qmIesWDP6Tc/видео.htmlsi=O8UpNfJX8tu9bKJ_
In Debrecen Hungary, we use Urbino trolley buses. They are fantastic!
I was wondering this. I take these buses everyday but never realised the company actually *is* Polish. Ironically, the bus being painted in the Polish flag threw me off 😂 (in Poland they use different colors)
But why is the suspension so hard? On bad roads the other buses we have here are better: vanhool, MAN, Mercedes doesnt matter, but the solaris ones pull your teeth out if the roads are bad.
@@aster934 Those are city busses and not dirt bikes.
Speaking of Solaris. They do have plans to enter the US and Canadian bus market.
Really? That would be cool! We are basically down to only two major manufacturers right now..so there is room!
@@BusDriverLifeI also heard Rumors that Ebusco plans to enter the North American Market in the future
@@superbrownsheep3777 That'd be interesting but cautious. Ebusco is a controverisal manufacturer, and here in Denmark we've invested in a lot of Ebusco buses, but they've been some of the least reliable on the market. Especially their newer 3.0 model thats developed entirely in house with daring design choices like a fully carbon fibre construction and batteries built into the floor. I've heard reports from bus drivers that the buses dont handle well as if the very structural chassis of the buses cant handle the conditions of regular bus service and are shaking themselves apart.
@@superbrownsheep3777 not with ebusco 3.0 though, those are too lightweight for north american standards
@@BusDriverLife if Solaris comes to US, it will differ from EU version to comply US standards and requirements and it will be designed like US bus too. Just have a look to Crown-Ikarus history: the articulated Ikarus 286 was just like the ordinary US bus made from US parts and it didn't look like Ikarus 280 or 283 model. The Škoda 14TrE and Škoda 14TrSF trolleybuses made for US also significally differed from European Škoda 14Tr or Škoda 14TrM.
The main reason I can see as to why buses from elsewhere are so different from ours, is regulations. For example, the dashboards we have here are not regulated at all as far as I know. But in Europe, dashboards have been regulated and unified by the "Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen", or VDV, since the late 90s. If you look at other buses made in Europe by various brands in various countries, like MAN, Mercedes, Iveco, Solaris, Bollore, etc... they all have very similar dashboards, with buttons mostly all in the same spots. Each brand get to have slight variations, but they're all based on the same concept.
Another reason could be the mentality of people when it comes to public transit as a whole. Here it's often viewed as the "poor man's choice", while in Europe it seems to just be considered as another mean of transportation. Hence why the networks are so, SO much more developed than they are here, more people are potential targets. So manufacturers also try to please to more people, and operators are better funded.
Personally I believe modern doesn't mean better looking. The Isuzu reminded me of an Iveco design, and I think it's butt ugly, but to each their own. I prefer a more conservative look, but I do agree some of our buses do need an update on other aspects, especially the driver's area, but I don't mind the split windows lol
The Drivers place in europe is a ISO Norm regulatet thing, it is almost the same for all Busses. so Drivers have all the Switches and Steering Wheel on the same place so every Busdriver can drive it without problems.
Let me make a correction, Isuzu is Japan brand but Isuzu's which appeared in this video are Anadolu Isuzu which is Turkish-Japan manufactured.
Just started my 3rd day training for my local transit. Thanks for the real life videos, it helped me to understand what I was getting into so that I could go into this profession level headed with a good understanding of what to expect. Keep up the good work and honest video's!
Thank you and I wish you the best on your journey!!
Solaris has plans to enter the US market in 2026 with a design developed specifically for the North America. Apparently you can't just transplant European busses to the US without some changes.
With all the nice things you said about Solaris in the video, if you contact the manufacturer they might give you a test ride. You would have to travel all the way to the factory in Poland though.
Or get a job as a bus driver in Poland, many cities are looking for one 😉
@@Taki_tam_ktos Isn't there a language requirement, in case of emergency and such?
@@comdo831 basics are needed. We have many drivers from post Soviet countries, and they are not speaking fluently polish
@@Taki_tam_ktos In Singapore we were recruiting more bus drivers from China & people were complaining they were less fluent in English, to serve the minority races in the country
I think that it's just about too much change at once: back in the nineties, the environment was the next best thing and the more eco-friendly a vehicle could be, the better. But the vehicles you saw usually were so drastically different on the outside that they just seemed to shout 'hey! look at me! I'm an eco-friendly vehicle!'. Thus, such vehicles usually were never heard from again. I guess it's the same for buses. Just taking European buses to the US will probably be such a radical change that people will reject it, if not even for the 'but why not something from our american bus-manufacturers!?'
Ikarus, the Hungarian bus brand. Even manufactured in the US in the 80s. Also Ikarus was the company that produced the first fully low-floored articulated bus in the world.
my favorite bus 90'-00' :)
Nice to see that you have found our videos! Love to see that you’re featuring us in your productions! Thanks a lot 😁
No problem! Hopefully I get a chance to meet you guys on one of your future trips to America!
@@BusDriverLife would have been an honor! 😁
That European bus (second one) was filmed in Brno, Czech Republic. My home town ❤️🇨🇿
As a German Viewer, it's very interesting to see the differents between American and European Busses.
The Mercedes Benz Bus in the last part of your Video, this was a prototype. Most German Cities like Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg have these Busses. There are called Mercedes eCitaro. And they have nearly the same look, but there are some differents.
Cool! I’m going to check out the eCitaro. Thanks for watching in Germany! That’s awesome!
@@BusDriverLife from a German rider's perspective, the MAN Lion's City and the MB Citaros feel like the "quintessential" city buses.
@@ska042 SIngapore now also has many Citaros & Lion's City but the latter's bodywork, while having a similar design to buses in Europe, is built by Malaysian coachbuilder Gemilang instead, maybe as it's cheaper. 3 door buses were rare until recently though as the engine is on the port side & thus a 3rd exit means having to step over the engine (with the country being RHD), which is less convenient. We also have a similar no. of Scania K230UBs not only used as public buses with Gemilang commuter bus bodywork, but also a few were fitted instead with bodywork from SC Auto/Chivalrous (for use as shuttle buses originally to serve a university's campus) that seemed to have been converted from a coach to a commuter bus design, so they're unaturally tall & also seem like they have more inertia, leading to more sluggish acceleration on upslopes & more lurching forward when braking, though they ride out road bumps better. Uniquely Singapore also has an almost equal no. of single & double-decker buses (60% vs 40%), with the latter originally consisting mostly Volve B9TLs but now with more ADL Enviro500s & MAN A95s too. We might also be the only customer of MAN A24 (the non-integral bodywork version of the A23 articulated bus I think). Now our gov't is buying only electric buses which come mainly from China instead e.g. BYD K9, Yutong E12(DD), though we also have 20x Linkkers
Wow, finally someone in the U.S. who says NORTH America, not just AMERICA.
Us-nord 😊
You mean finally someone in the US who says NORTH America. The rest of the world has no problem with saying "North America" and many cringe when they hear US citizens calling themselves "Americans" as opposed to other inhabitants of the American continent .
@@frenchimp Yeah, that's what I meant. I though it would be obvious. 🤣
I suppose I should edit that part.
@@immune85 Cool.
@@immune85 yeah dude. Noticed the same. 👍
Austrian here, lets check out MAN Buses from 2003-2005. Exactly same interior like the one in the 7th minute. Feels good to look back to a point when i was a teenager 🤓
I hope you get a nice ergonomic pneumatic cockpit bus soon. You deserve it.
well, I live in Switzerland and the bus that drives in my region and also takes me to school every day actually is very often the Solaris Urbino 18. Sometimes it can aswell be the MAN Lion's City 18 or Mercedes-Benz Citaro G (all 'operated' by "PostAuto CH"), and I gotta say that they are all very nice to drive with. Especially the newer Solaris; it is very comfortable, modern and also looks amazing from outside. And even though I am used to it, I really enjoy driving these busses every day and I just can't imagine how it is to drive in an american bus.. Love your videos, all the best from Switzerland❤
thumbs up!
The Solaris is the one used in the Brno City Transport Company (DPMB) that bus is really quiet and comfortable, air conditioned, contactless payment, and love the ramp for wheelchairs/strollers. Also what I’ve seen, it is really friendly with the drivers.
Very agreed like them too and they are fast!
@@joe125ful very fast and agile, despite their size
@@flyLSYes!
Also in my willage we have new MAN bus its not that fast but smooth and spacy too.
I rememeber whe i was young going to shool using old buses,loud,smelly,slow..
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jablonec_nad_Nisou,_autobusov%C3%A9_n%C3%A1dra%C5%BE%C3%AD,_bus_Karosa.jpg
Something like this.
@@joe125ful Like the ones from Plzenský kraj? Those are good ones too
On the other hand that ramp for wheelchair passangers have to be deployed manually. I believe that most american/canadian buses have this ramp deployed electronically (or at least they were in Canada)
Where I work, we have a really old bus from like the 70s and one day, I took a peak through the windshield and realized that the controls are exactly the same as the 2022 buses.
Have a look at Alexander Dennis British made buses they manufacture a lot of busses including Double Deckers which they ship all over the world including Hong Kong , London etc only way I’ve heard of them they have a factory in Scotland close to where I live . Enjoyed your video a lot, fist time I’ve come across your channel 👍
I'm glad to see your RUclips channel which I have just come across. It is interesting to see the comparisons. The bus that you are on looks alright, it does what it needs to do and is accessible for handicapped people. Having the standard lights at the front mean that they are cheaper to replace ratther than the stylised ones of the other buses. The split windscreen as you rightly say also helps to keep expenses for replacement down also. Thank you for this most interesting broadcast.
Thank you for watching!!
brno, czech republic mentioned via the solaris urbino bus!!!🥳for me its the best bus we have in our brnos fleet. its very comfortable!!
Hello colleague, I'm from Brno, I ride the Solaris Urbino 18 bus. We have very comfortable low-floor buses of the brand Iveco, Sor.
If you want to take it (Solaris) for a test drive you have to come to Poland. Made in Poland
Solaris is Polish made bus company very popular in European countries
I ride the short version of that Solaris bus quite frequently as a passenger. It seems to me that is quite "fun to drive" and well handling - the bus drivers are going around corners with this with much more confidence (i.e. quicker) than with the older busses in the fleet. One thing to keep in mind is that the passenger space is very operator specific. The bus I'm riding on frequently has very comfortable padded seats which sadly make the bus quite impractical because they take up a lot of width and so, the aisles get too narrow.
I wanna say that Solaris buses looks so nice. Especialy new models. I dont like the "To much" futuristic approach of mercedes
We have a mixed bag of bus types in the UK, my favourite is the VDL SB200/Wright Pulsar & Commander, nice sounding buses, fast and reliable.
I wish they were faster. They could be if they didn't dwell at stations for so long. Many UK bus networks insist on using vehicles with only 1 door so if you're sitting at the back, you often have to join a slow moving queue to get off, with little space for standees who aren't getting off to move out of your way as all the wheelchair/bike spaces have to be at the front near the only door. This, along with having to queue so the driver can double as a ticket inspector at every single stop creates a bottleneck for passenger movement, adding a lot of time to the journey. There are often no announcements about which bus and rail lines you can catch from which platform at the next stop or even what the next stop is so people often spend extra time finding those kinds of things out from the driver while getting on or off, causing more delay.
In most of Europe, buses typically have 2 - 3 doors for regular buses and 3 - 5 doors for bendy buses so getting on and off is usually quite fast to keep things moving. There are also announcements and screens. I hope the UK can switch to that system. I also hope the tickets can be integrated because even daily and weekly tickets are often mode specific and single tickets are often only valid on the first bus you get on instead of an entire single journey using multiple lines and modes. I wish UK local transit a much brighter future.
@@lazrseagull54 In Turkey 3 doors buses getting on and off very good
@@lazrseagull54 we had bendy buses in London turned out they were just too long for the roads as to speed most of London now has a 20 mph limit
@@lazrseagull54 And than you have countries (The Netherlands) who had a great ticket system, and decided it had to be 'more fair' and 'more simple' and threw away a good, simple ticket system. We now basically have the same problem as in the UK: though there are tickets that cover a wider area and multiple operators, most tickets you can buy if you do not use a regular smartcard (or don't want to buy it, considering the ridiculous price of 7,50 for the card alone) are operator specific and usually only cover the ride you take.
Operator or area specific sounds like it's not such a big deal, but for the average person it's completely impossible to tell where that 'specific area' begins or ends and as some areas now also feature multiple operators that cover all 4 modalities possible (bus, tram, metro and train) under the umbrella-term 'R-NET', it has become a shit-mess of tickets, unfavourable (and hard to understand) T&C's, and especially hard to distinguish which bus one can and can't take (every vehicle under R-NET uses the same red-grey livrey with huge 'R-NET' letters on it, but the operator name is only mentioned very small).
Considering the huge price increase sich the smartcard system was made mandatory nationwide in 2011, I still think this is a deliberate thing...
I like how the Urbino IV doesn't try to copy other manufacturers' buses. Look at the new MAN Lion's City and the Scania Citywide. They look so similar.
In Schweden, buses and lorries from MAN and Scania are serviced at the same workshops.
Guy from Austria here. The electric Mercedes eCitaro buses have been in use for a few years as regional buses that connect a few smaller cities and towns, but recently they are also started being used on a few lines in Vienna. The design stayed pretty much the same as the concept shown in the video, but I think theres no wireless charging possible and also actual seats that are used in the standard Citaros. Oh and all the Mercedes Citaro models (incl. articulated ones) from 2016 onwards have the doors opening sideways to the outside, instead of turning inwards, like the older models used to.
The Merc bus was indeed a advertisement. However, I think you can engineer that stuff to be nigh indestructible. Actually, wireless charging cradles are easier to design vandal-proof than anything with a connector.
Hello am just 6 months as a bus driver in Austria its really nice being a bus driver 😊
That’s cool!!
yes, because I bet there is very little anti-social behavior in Austria ;-)
@@bodazephyr6629 As an Austrian who uses busses daily, believe me, there is, especially at night...
@@bodazephyr6629 As long as he's not driving in Vienna, everything should be fine... (The people there are everything but nice)
@@heybenjii5544 really, I thought Austria was so peaceful and quiet.
The irony is that some NewFlyer busses in the states based of a Dutch Den Oudsten bus design. NewFlyer belonged to Den Oudsten.
Volvo owns NovaBus.
In the truck sector, a lot of trucks by Freightliner drove with a Mercedes Cab in the 90s.
I have used US/ Canadian and European busses (Merc, Setra, Solaris, MAN Büssing) and have to say form follow functions. In the end, the VÖV set the tone in Europe, whilst the National Highway mandated another design. I drove to school with an 90s O405 articulated bus in Germany for over 7 year, which was very worn. So were other busses (Setra S200s), which followed at the same company, until it lost it’s concession. Then another company came with Solaris busses from Poland, which were newer, but soon fell into disrepair. The same company drove me to University for the same time. With older MANs and Solaris.
Years later I lived in Mississauga in Canada and I had no other choice to travel with the NewFlyers and NovaBusses. At no point, I felt that North American busses were “old” or “broken”. I used them last year in the GTA again when I came back. I also use busses in the US to get around.
A European bus can’t fold the seats in the front to accomodate wheelchair users. There is only space in the middle with a manual! lifted ramp. In the US, the front entry is wide enough to accomodate most wheelchair models and the ramp is operated by the driver. That’s better. This is also a thing I saw.
People claiming that US Busses are too old should go to Prague or Sczeczin and see the vehicles there. Old East Bloc Tatras. Old soviet metros.
@@Canleaf08 I'm sorry, but seeing as a wheelchair user in the Netherlands, (where we mostly use buses from Germany, and less from Belgium, France, Poland and Hungary), there are always tip-up seats (most times 2, 3 or 4) at wheelchair spaces. In fact, I usually have to argue with people sitting on those seats once or twice a month just in order to place my wheelchair on that bus. That's the same for rural and city buses (and I use both)
Manual or electric ramps is a bit more complicated.
Where I live we have freezing weather at least once a year, electric ramps freeze up and are afterwards a total disaster, I have seen them work properly once (and no, that's not an exaggeration). And that bus was only a month in service. So I prefer manual ramps, at least they get that job done.
However in Spain I saw very well working electric ramps. So yeah, if they work that would be great. If they do not work, please use manual.
@@Canleaf08 Idk nothing about Sczeczin but how could u say Prague has old buses? almost all are SOR NB12 (or articulated SOR NB18) and before them they used Irisbus citybus (Renault Agora) (in service ~1996-last in service 2020) which also looks decent in that time. Just search image of them and tell if u find them old and tatra style.
With metros. Prague is using 2 types: Siemens ČKD M1 - Which I personaly thinks are really nice even now (created 1998) and renovated 81-71M (from 81-717/714) which looks not great not terrible.
@@Canleaf08 Prague has 100% low floor buses except couple vehicles in retro service. The local transport coordinator has strict rules about vehicle age so the average age of buses is less than 10 years. I don't get the complicated entry through first door. I take my stroller and enter directly from door to dedicated spot, it's only 2 meters away. Yes, ramp for wheelchairs is manual but every bus has kneeling function so the entry point is level with sidewalk (but drivers don't use it as often as should be). Also not many people are morbidly obese here that they would need to use the ramp often. 4 doors in 12 meter bus allow for fast exchange of passengers and that's what matters in busy city.
@@richardvanderlaak826 we definitely have the issue with winters causing door and ramp malfunctions over here as well (at least where I am in Southern Canada). our excessive use of road salt in particular causes corrosion issues too so our buses usually aren't road worthy any more past 18 years.
I haven't seen split windshields on busses placed in regular line service in like 25 years over here in Germany.
That is not counting the ones kept for history purposes
Solaris does still make those though even for their 4th gen facelift and I know of at least one company in Germany that uses them. Not quite sure why (maybe cheaper to replace only one half?), but you're right that it's not very common anymore
Well...until the late 90'ths buses in Berlin did have split windsurfen, being in service until 2010 approximately... 😂
@@berndbarthel6885 yeah similar down here in Kassel
In Hungary, until the early 2000s, there was a bus manufacturing company called Ikarus, which, in my humble opinion, made one of the best buses of its era.
There was a series of 260s and 280s buses, the 260s were solo buses while the 280s were hinged. The options for the 260s were 2 or 3 doors, while the 280s were 3 or 4 doors, and they can be manual or automatic shifters. They had large slide-windows, so you can breathe in summer. No AC was built in. :D
The plans and the manufacture begins in the mid '70s, so the solutions they used was from that era. In those days there were no environmental pollution regulations, so they used motors from East Germany and i think from Hungary (IFA, Raba and Csepel).
The seats were made from steel pipes, and metal sheets, covered with a foam layer inside an artificial leather - they were the most comfortable seats i ever tried. Their width was more than enough, and they were not installed next to the bus side, there were a gap between the seat and the side panel. There was single and double seats, they were identical. The single seats were on the left side of the bus while the double seats were on the right. They were washable with a watering hose :D Vandalism was often means those days cutting the leather covers of the seats, and made markings on the seats and the inner side of the buses. It was usually on the city buses, while the regional buses were clean.
From security prospect: there was an assassination attempt against a group of jew people in the '90s, when a bomb next to the bus expoldes, and all the passengers of the bus survived!
A Polish automotive body builder here, you are right at 2:30. The thing tho is, European Bus windshields are glued to the unibody thus giving the vehicle more structural integrity just like in all modern cars. Glued windshields give the driver also a cleaner view & have better aerodynamics.
Ikarus 280 was best bus ever (for me) ❤
I’m actually going to do a video featuring that ikarus buses soon 😃
That was the best bus for everybody who had the chance to ride it. And a special version of Ikarus was sold in the USA.
I drove the ikarus 280 for a total of 4 years. I remember that time very friendly, mainly night lines through Prague.@@transportromania
@@zbyneknejezchleba3871 They were quite loud though.
@@jeshkam yes I admit yes for the passenger but the noise in the driver's cabin was fine 👍
One big thing that happens in Romania at least, which I'm not sure is a thing in NA, is that when someone becomes a driver, they are assigned a particular bus and that bus is theirs until they stop working there. This helps many buses stay clean and maintained, because most drivers will take a lot of care to keep their bus pristine. If this happens in NA please tell me!
That highly depends on the particular operator
I can say that I've never experienced that in Britain. I know that some/many coach drivers keep the same vehicle all the time.
But I am on local bus services (US=transit buses), and in the course of the day my bus may be driven by four or five different drivers. I will drive two (or occasionally three) different buses in one day.
So there are 16 buses on the route, but it takes 37 different drivers to provide the full service from 05:00-23:30
@@michaelgoodwin6565 here, in Romania, there are usually 2 drivers assigned to one bus. From the beginning of the working hours until around 1 PM one driver will be on that bus, then after 1 PM until the end of the work hours the other driver will be on the bus. This helps keep buses in good condition, as the two drivers can maintain it on their own and report any problems very easily
That sounds like the old ways in Malta.
In Singapore bus drivers may not be assigned a specific bus but may be assigned a specific bus service running at specific times for much of their career* (& I think the same is in HK too). So if a bus service is transferred to a different operator I think the drivers running them will automatically be transferred along too. So you'll see the same people driving the same bus services at the same time as before, just wearing different uniforms. When Go-Ahead (from London) entered our country & introduced interlining (where drivers switch between different routes throughout the day) it was found to be more stressful I think, & sparked a mass resignation in 2016 & another bus company had to provide drivers temporarily to avoid bus service cuts.
* The same bus is usually used for the same service at the same time of the day every day for a few months before they're rotated around I think. Perhaps they're waiting for the contracts for the ads displayed on some buses to end, which may stipulate which routes the ads are to be displayed on.
9:00 The license plate of the Mercedes-Benz bus (MA-IN 2016) is a legitimate license plate from the place the bus was built: Mannheim, Germany. And in Mannheim, Carl Benz built his first automobile.
Mannheim is the Place where mercedes-benz Busses and Trucks Are build
@@Dorian217 also there is a Mercedes bus and truck inovation and production center in Türkiye since 1967.
It's almost certainly a prototype - fully operational and licensed to run on public roads, but not in serial production. It does look like a variant of the Citaro.
@@V45194 Lets put it like this: The interior is modified, but the shell is actually massproduced and used for the Fuel Cell and the Battery variant of the Citaro series.
Solaris is a Polish company from Bolechowo near Poznań in the region of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland). They started in early 1990s, and make busses, trolley buses and fully electric battery powered busses, as well as trams.
Very good video! I love that you made your Job also a hobby as in a youtube Channel. 6:50 what is a BRT system? What does it stand for?
Bus Rapid Transit. Mass transportation system
i think it's mostly cause there's little competition in the US regarding public transit busses so brands stick with outdated design cause the cities who need them will purchase them anyway, they won't choose for a Man bus, Volvo bus or BYD bus cause it's not available to them. imagine if there was only 1 car brand, they wouldn't be forced to update their designs cause of competition.
I think there are also regulations in US to limit the manufacturing to US only, so no real competition from overseas manufacturers. Less competition, less needs to innovate and update.
@ yes exactly, but they still had plenty of time to set up manufactures before “build America” came along and pushed all those regulations. I really think there’s not enough public transit need as of right now to make companies move overseas either, this is seen with a lot of stuff like different car models sold globally, stuff for the interior of your house, europe has much more modern appliances for cooking of the same brand that aren’t sold in the US.
I know this is very random, but the way money is spend in the US has a lot of influence on this, in europe they like to spend good money on quality, modern and luxurious buses cause it improves the quality of life, in the US most things are done as cheaply as possible like renovations, repairs to things, road projects, infrastructure and also buses.
That's part of it but cost is also a factor. No city wants to pay for a fancy bus that drunk people will puke in.
@@mediocreman2 Fancy that we don't have that problem in here
@@mediocreman2 cause they’re not doing anything to help the homeless nor do they discourage driving to make taking the bus more attractive. Other countries have done it, but ofc these cities lack courage
I live near Solaris headquarters and we have a lot of these buses in the city of Poznań, Poland. The Urbino IV is my favourite bus, very comfortable (especially the electric one) and they look great. Most of them are diesel but there are more and more electric ones as well as some with hydrogen fuel cells.
Great video ! Just a quick notice: the Mercedes bus at the end was just a prototype, since then they made a "real world" version, the eCitaro, which kept most of the exterior design mixed with what Mercedes was already making (the Citaro C2) for everything else. If you want to see European city buses in North America it's actually possible: there are VanHool city buses in the SF Bay Area (Oakland) running for AC Transit, as well in Canada around Toronto (running for York Region Transit). They've been slightly adapted for North America but kept most of their original features ! I know that a Mercedes Citaro was once tested in NYC and an Irisbus Citelis in Montreal, Canada, both many years ago, but both got rejected sadly.
Yeah I’ve seen some of the van hools before passing through SF/Oakland. I’ve got to react to the eCitaro one day!
also ADL Enviro 500's are around in some places in the states and Canada, there were also some older enviro200's and ALX200's i believe but i'm not sure if they're still in service
@@xanpagebrown Yes true, I forgot about these
@@xanpagebrown Unitrans in Davis have some.
@BusDriverLife Come on over on the Causeway Connection and check 'em out at the Silo.
In my town, in france, we have Mercedes Citaro. They are cool and, very important, they can take out a ramp fot disabled people.
Greetings from Poland. This is where we produce solaris vehicles :)
Cool! Nice looking buses! I hope to ride one someday! Maybe even drive!! 😎
I never thought i will find a bus review from a real professional, I didn’t know it is so interesting to listen to! Thank you, sir! Wish you health and strength!
Thank you!!
I personally don't think the buses in America look that out dated and boring. Either way, It doesn't really matter how your buses look. What does matter is the riding (and/or driving) experience and reliablity of said buses.
I respect your opt and everyone has their own tastes but a lot of North American busses like proterra gilling and even artic electric new flyers have had many issues with agencies often having to send them back to factories to repair them. Also doesn’t make sense how all North American “low flow” busses are only 70% low flow (there’s stairs at the back) while in europe and the rest of the world it’s 100% low floor
Also the fact that a lot of European and Asian busses have 3 doors for more capacity but North American ones have only two, even only one sometimes (novabus suburban edition)
I agree for the most part. Aesthetic details matter a lot less than they would on cars and I’d rather have a bus that shows up every time. I do think that the overall design has some influence-a clean, modern-looking bus might attract more ridership than a utilitarian box would. In my opinion, New Flyer and BYD are doing pretty good on the exterior department.
Sorry, but what your are saying is like "oh, we don't need to improve our cars, the 20 years old ones are doing good, let us build just those"... Really?!
@TomTom-ik8dm That's not what Josh is saying; his point is that functionality matters more than aesthetics in a bus. Nobody is saying that buses shouldn't improve. They have, and they will.
Love the video! I can agree on this, I work for GO Transit in toronto, ontario, we have MCIs and Alexander Dennis Double deckers buses built in the UK, and the main difference i find in them and European buses is the drivers area is much more spacious and open than the American counterparts
As someone who drives Alexander Dennis buses in the UK, and has been onboard one of your lovely GO Enviro 500's and had a peek at the cab, I think the 500's cab is slightly larger and of the same sort of design as our newer buses that started being made 2016 onwards, they have a much nicer cab design. Some of our older ones (2010) have a very bad design for leg room in the cab, so your left leg ends up getting cramp.
If you want to see what I put up with (albeit the opposite way round) go up to Collingwood where the CTA uses Alexander Dennis Enviro 200 and NewFlyer MiDi (same bus different production facility) extensively.
Brit here, living in S.E Asia: I had no idea Canada had British buses! Alexander Dennis, no less lol. They were quite popular in Hong Kong and Singapore too, going back decades. In Honkers and Singapore, they were fitted with extra-large capacity locally-made bodies, able to carry well over a hundred people!
@@swanvictor887 Yup! The Enviro500 is used by a few transit operators here in Canada, majority are tourist buses, and for GO Transit they are suburban styled with 1 door and coach bus styled seats
In Belgrade where I live we have Isuzu CityPort, Mercedes Benz Citaro 2018(i think) articulated and regular and Solaris Urbino 18.
Of the three the Urbinos have to be the best. Solaris really has a good idea of how a bus should function, look and be made.
CityPort is losing those drop-down seats, and the front is getting plummeted by the pot holes.
The Citaro I personally didn't still get to work on so all I can say is yay for all-round USB charging.
Did they retire all the Ikarus/Ikarbus busses?
@@AndrejaKostic There are a few articulated that run daily still. Mostly the last series that was basically MAN. From solos, the "Mercedes" are still running plus a few older models. And I think I saw the original low floor articulated bus that was on BeoTruck fair like 15 years ago a few months ago running.
Check out italian city busses... They are their own world too, also very modern as their trains. We have mostly Mercedes Citaro or Man busses here (Croatia & Slovenia)
What are really bad are the El Dorado busses we have in Marin. We use them to get over the hills to the coast.
They look like they are from the 70's and they are always breaking down.
An enjoyable watch mate. Good one 👍👍
I’ll note gillig offers single piece windows but few agencies order them.
Van hools were a weird phase for AC transit
Solaris has said they are going to enter the NA market but we will see.
Yeah I have seen a Gillig before with the single glass windshield..it looked pretty cool. I forgot which agency though. I’ve seen the van hools..I’m not a fan of how they look. It will be interesting to possibly see an American version of a Solaris bus!
Van Hool is pretty interesting. In North America they have a reputation for being expensive and premium. But in Europe it couldn't be further opposite. Here across the pond, Van Hool's reputation is being some of the cheapest, lowest quality garbage ever manufacturered on the continent. They are not very well liked around here. Heck in Denmark, Tide Bus, who got the contract to operate all urban buses in the city of Aalborg, ordered 67 electric buses from Van Hool, alongside 40 from the Chinese manufacturer Golden Dragon. The latter has a sceptical reliability record but some contractors kept ordering their buses because they were dirt cheap. However the Van Hools have been even less reliable than the Golden Dragon buses. And Ive heard this directly from drivers who worked for Tide bus in Aalborg who have since quit and gotten new jobs at other contractors.
Apparently the management at Tide was crappy too, completely inconsiderate of the actual needs of drivers or the realisms of what it takes to make the buses run reliably and on time. All they cared about was minimizing costs, and shovelling public money into their hands to get a good profit margin from their public contract.
Much of my family stays in Oakland. They never liked the VanHool buses.
I'm from Berlin Germany, we had busses with a modern electric ramp. Often it was broken, so to return to a simple, mechanical solution, that is reliable, was progressive.
Yup I'll take something that just works over something that is the new latest and greatest tech
I love buses from the United States and outside of it. I been to Puerto Rico, Europe, South Korea and Canada.
10:26 To the Mercedes. Its was a show case bus. So it was never intented to be used in real traffic. They wanted to show what was theoreticly the possible future
5:56 this bus is from Brno (Czech Republic) I rode it just yesterday, It's my favorite out of all the buses in Brno. It's clean and there's a lot of seats and standing room. There are also a few USB ports so you can charge your phone.
DAMN the Urbino 18 IV is my favourite one! And guess what ride with them every day as a passenger lol!😂
Having family in both continents, Ive been on buses in many different European cities. I too prefer European designs. That’s probably why the New Flyer Xcelsiors are my favourite North American buses. I prefer European buses with their modern and sleek designs, and their interiors are often a lot much nicer on the inside. I also like how most buses in Europe have windows in the back.
Parisian newer diesel busses do not have window at the back any more. No last tango in Paris :). Electric should be able to , though
In France the Byk-Rak in the front is illegal. It for the pedestrian's secutity in case of an accident.
Same here in Germany. If you want to take your bike with you, better pray the reserved space inside the bus opposite of the rear doors is actually empty, otherwise you might as well not even bother to get on
@@Knaeckebrotsaege In Singapore meanwhile people are already making noise at tourists who take our commuter buses (mostly CItaros) from the airport to downtown, complaining that their luggage takes up more space & that they're too stingy to take a taxi. Think that's the only bus that goes downtown (our gov't probably would never introduce a coach service as it might canibalize ridership from our airport train line (which is built to metro standard, so lots of space but not much seats). Furthemore both these buses & trains stop at suburbs along the way & can thus get crowded further down the route
well, in event of an accident, whatever there's on the bus front, will hurt a lot!
Colleague, I am also a bus driver in Germany. 20 years in long-distance travel and now city transport. I currently drive a Mercedes Benz Citaro C3 articulated bus. Compared to its interior, what you have in the bus is more like 1980 but not 2015. The tachograph alone is no longer installed here in Germany. and I always wanted to take a bus to the USA. But when I look at these boxes now, I gratefully forego it
I always love to look at this kind of video's. I take the bus very often, so it's interesting to see a few American buses too. In the Netherlands, the new VDL Citea Electric and Volvo 7900 Electric joined the fleet since the end of 2023. These buses are driving next to the classic (old) VDL Ambassador, IVECO Crossway, MAN Lions city and Mercedes Benz Citaro diesel buses (amongst others). It may be interesting to look at those oldies too. Furthermore, have a nice day!
I always wondered why do American buses have the steering wheel almost perfectly perpendicular to the ground, whereas in Europe the steering wheel is a bit more inclined towards the driver which seems to be more comfortable for the driver. Is the American version easier to steer requiring less force to turn or is there a different reason for it?
less steering is needed in the US because the roads are more straight, usually in a grid system. European roads are usually narrow and winding, so lots of steering input is required from the driver.
The shells are also adjustable, and often are more tilted in operation…but tilted up when the driver gets in/out to make maneuvering easier.
It’s also super common on older busses for operators to just swap steering wheels around between coaches when one needs a repair. I’ve seen lots of Gillig wheels on NFI busses, for example.
You don't have to go cross an ocean to see a Euro bus, you only have to cross the causeway. Unitrans in Davis runs Alexander Dennis Envro 500s (from the UK, though more common in Hong Kong), which are a touch dated now (from 2002) but look pretty cool. But also they are double deckers, which is cool as hell.
(They also run some old london RT series double deckers from the early 50s)
There's also a bunch of them in Vegas, but that's not a 20min drive.
There are quite a lot of Alexander Dennis Enviro500 MMCs at Causeway Bay in Hong Kong.
@@CaptainM792 In this case the causeway is the bridge between Sacramento, CA (where @BusDriverLife works) and Davis, CA.
@@nmpls You can even spot a Causeway Connection bus in the beginning of this video that connects the two cities using said causeway.
Several Bay Area agencies operate double decker busses, along with Foothill Transit in SoCal. Further north, Community Transit in the Seattle area uses “Double Talls” (because coffee!) on their commuter routes along with some contracted Sound Transit routes.
@BusDriverLife Or go to French Carribean overseas departments ! :)
Maybe it’s on purpose to discourage using public transport and boost auto sales
Nice video 🙂
The Mercedes bus from 9.00-10.30 has actually been test driving for handsfree driving some 1,5 year ago in the Netherlands (where the video you showed was taken) with real passengers. This was filmed on the Connexxion 300 line from Haarlem via Hoofddorp, Schiphol Airport to Amsterdam. You see some shots in Hoofddorp and in the tunnel under the airport.
I've no idea how the test finally ended, but line 300 stil has real people driving it uptill now 🙂. Line 300 is a high speed line, mostly on a dedicated busroad with priority over crossing trafic.
Keep up the good work
👍
Brilliant channel.
What i drove back in 1988 are Leyland Atlanteans in Busways Newcastle livery of Mustard and Burgundy, i still work for the same company 36 years later but we are now called Stagecoach busways in Newcastle and i now drive predominantly double deck Alexander Dennis MMC low floor vehicles of which the company changed its livery about 4 years ago and we now look a little more modern.
In all these years i have seen great advancements in vehicle safety including retarders in the transmission, disc brakes front and rear, air suspension, ABS braking systems and recently Radar cruise control but this is only on intercity long distance coaches and not local scheduled services.
After watching a few of your videos i have to admit that North American buses do look a bit dared especially in the cab with all the random switchgear and individual gauges, our latest buses which are about two years old now have seperate switches for interior lights etc but the dashboard is very much like a car with lcd screens for info and warning lights and also integrated speedo and tacho.
Sorry i'm rambling but good luck with your channel from a long time Northeast UK bus driver. 👍
@@dieseljockey I appreciate that!! Thank you for sharing!!
@@dieseljockey I used to love the X10 because it had the USB chargers in the back of the seats. Now I've seen some buses that advertise having WiFi.
I've always liked the looks of Solaris buses especially. They are owned by or affiliated with CAF now, and actually trying to get into the North American market from what I'm aware. You probably saw their booth at the APTA Expo. A Solaris Trollino (trolleybus) was also operated as a demo unit in Vancouver, BC for a short period last year.
Also I agree, the M-B Citaro shown certainly looks cool and stylish, but no way that would hold up in regular service here. That's sort of an issue with some of the European designs in general, they would need modifications to meet safety and crash standards here and also better suspension ans perhaps more powerful powertrains for the different driving standards.
Hopefully they don't inherit CAF's quality control. In the rail world CAF are known for poor quality control and poor ride quality.
@@mrvwbug4423In Luxembourg we have CAF trams they work well.
Aside from complying with the (outdated) more stringent safety and crash standards, why do you think they'd need to have their suspension modified or a different powertrain? Citaros are used all around Europe in all kinds of climate and geography, and either in urban or intercity configuration they're reliable (and that's why they are so popular)
@@MathiasBruno The Citaro model specifically would probably be fine aside from perhaps adding ugly US standard bumpers. If for diesel a Cummins engine isn't already offered they might need to add that as well depending on transit agency preference. I'm thinking more of the suspension modifications Alexander-Dennis had to specifically make with their Enviro200 before selling it here, or the poor ride quality of a Van Hool AG300 compared to a New Flyer D60LFR.
@@mrvwbug4423 Really about of poor quality of CAF trains... old brands who worked here in Spain (Macosa, f.e.) had built better products (nowadays, there are some 440s and 592s series riding yet at Spanish railways, and there were built at 70s and 80s). And old models of CAF were better built than now.
But if you want worse products, you can take AnsaldoBreda train (at Madrid underground there riding with 7000 and 9000 series and their quality is awful -compare with 2000 and 5000 series, older than these trains but better built-).
Best greetings from Spain!!!
For me, HESS is my most favourite bus producer.
I especially the newest version of their design.
Greetings from Switzerland ❤🇨🇭
Cool video. I'm glad you like the Polish Solaris Urbino 18 bus. Currently, it is probably the most popular city bus in Poland, it is also popular in other European countries. In Poland, buses must also be resistant to vandals. Solaris takes this into account. I like Solaris, but for me the best bus of all time is the Hungarian Ikarus 280, popular in all socialist countries, there were also versions for the North American market.
wdym vandals? it's as if there were more vandals in Poland than in the rest of EU which is not the case. Most of the buses in my city in Poland have generally been in great shape.
Best bus for me is also Ikarus 280....
Ikarus 280 for life!
this (us made) bus looks and fee like what we had in hungray at 1970's like Ikarus 280.
yep... same in Romania...
I love the Alexander Dennis Enviro line (The newest version has big windows on it stairs to the second level inspired by the New Routemaster) and the Volvo B9TL (the version with the curved top and bottom front windshield). Both has low floor, easily accessible wheelchair ramp for the driver to deploy, good seating layout, and are spacious even at full capacity.
I think it has a lot to do with volume and competition. There's a huge market for premium busses in Asia and Europe: Mercedes alone sold 26,168 busses last year, around 3,000 of which were electric. I couldn't find numbers for north america, but gillig had a big press release about selling 100 electric busses *total*. The economies of scale are just totally different. But the US can't take advantage of that because it wants to protect the local manufacturers at the cost of riders and drivers.
I think the issue is NA is car centric and bus for the “poor arse” commoners, the city councils just not funding bus service to a high enough level to make it make sense, plus the residential area is so spread out... ain't no one gonna walk in weather for up to an hour to that bus stop which might not have regular service ...
German here. The 3. Generation of the Mercedes-Benz Citaro, the Citaro E is based on the same platform like the over 20 years old Citaro 1. gen.
Mercedes just face lift it and put an electric Motor in it.
What you see in the promo Video is just an "Idea" but the reality is, he looks the same like every other Citaro.
Put that in title in RUclips, there is a little Video from the BVG (Berlin public transport) from a Citaro E:
Bus 194 Berlin mitfahrt von Marzahn nach Wönnichstr. mit den Mercedes Benz eCitaro | ÖPNV Berlin
Solaris 🇵🇱🇵🇱
Here in Tallinn, Estonia we have a lot of these Solaris busses. I would say most of them are that kind, there is a also a shorter version of the same bus that also goes around.
Makes me realise how mush we take our buses for granted here in Germany. The oddest part of the US bus for me is that the disabled/pushchair section isn't build around the rear door, so people with wheelchairs or pushchairs have to negotiate all the other seats.
In Britain, the disabled and pushchair area is usually near the front of the bus, behind the front wheels and in front of most of the seats (many buses outside London only have a front door). This enables the driver to deploy the passenger ramp when needed for wheelchairs to board/alight.
@@jerry2357 I really dislike the whole 1 door thing in the UK and every time I visit, I'm sad to see it still hasn't been abolished. At least put it at the middle of the bus or something. If you're sitting at the back and need to get off at a busy stop, you have to join a slow queue spanning the length of the whole bus and because all the wheelchair/bike spaces have to be all the way at the front, standees have nowhere to move out of your way, adding a lot of time to the journey at each stop. Drivers in the rest of Europe just get out and walk to the middle door where they can manually operate the ramp, which just takes a couple of seconds. Having 3 - 5 doors is a lot less stressful for claustrophobic people.
In the US, ADA seating is almost always at the front of the coach, with the wheelchair ramp integrated into three front door. This ensures someone boarding in a wheelchair can still pay at the farebox as they board, and makes it far easier for the driver to align and deploy the ramp in the first place - especially at stops where the coach doesn’t have space to pull entirely flush with the curb.
Yeah they have very easy access through the front door because the bus kneels and disabled seating is near the driver. You want disabled passengers close to the driver in case they need assistance, are hard of hearing, etc.
@@jerry2357 I grew up in the UK and lived in Germany for the last 20 years. Of course things probably have changed in that time, but coming to Germany and finding space for wheelchairs and pushchairs on buses was a revelation.
I drive a 44 foot Volvo transit bus in my native Holland. I like your MCI Greyhound buses, very quiet and comfortable. The one thing I hate about US spec buses is the flat glass rearview mirrors, you don't see a damn thing. Most new buses now come with camera mirrors in Europe. Keep up the good work brother 😊
european living in netherlands here: took a trip to oregon last year and I LOVE your busses. you have bike racks on the bumper that's the coolest sh*t I ever saw
I like this video very much. I live in central Europe, in Slovakia. The Solaris bus, which is made in Poland, is very common around here, so as Czech-made SOR and italian Ivecos. These three marks are most common in the central Europe and are considerwd as a low-cost buses. Anyways, the modern ones look prety much modern and somewhat comfortable.
Speaking about the driver's place: these three has all the same place, like you can see in that Solaris. And I have to say that the dashboard of your American bus reminds me the dashboard of a hungarian Ikarus 280 from the 1970's (google it 😂 ). Amd of course, the Mercedes in this video is something just for a presentation. Actual West-eurupean made buses, like, e.g. Mercedes, Man, Setra, VanHool, looks pretty much similar to the Solaris, but thay are made just from the more quality materials, and so. If you like to compare 2015 bus from Mercedes, try looking at, for example Mercedes O530 CapaCity, which is a 19,5m long city bus with a design, that I personally really love.
Up where I live we occasionally get to ride on an Alexander Dennis E400MMC Sky Class Double Decker. They are great.
In Paris, we have some cool new bus models. One model has very high ceiling which make the inside so airy with big windows. Another bus model has a extreme long wheelbase and extreme short front and back overhangs. That bus able to turn due to sophisticated 4 wheel steering. In the future, I hope you can do some videos on Parisian buses!