Bus

Wikicars, a place to share your automotive knowledge

Generally, a vehicle designed to transport more than 10 persons. There are three vastly different types of bus:

Types

A Coach bus is a long distance, high comfort mode of travel. Coach buses range from 30-45 seats, and often include travel comforts such as overhead compartments and television entertainment systems.

Metro busses are configured for easy entry and exit. They are used primarily in urban areas in mass transit systems. These vehicles have a smaller capacity than coach buses and also a smaller size to ease navigation in crowded areas. The interior is equipped with grab handles to allow riders to stand while the bus is in motion.

School buses could be considered a combination of a Coach and Metro bus. The usage of a school bus is such that the riders exit in groups. For this reason, the seating is arranged to preclude exiting unless the bus is stationary. School buses also do not have seatbelts as their usage would be difficult to enforce on young riders. To compensate, the backrests of these buses are very high and padded. School buses are traditionally painted yellow to warn other motorists, and sometimes carry strobe light beacons to attract attention.

There are other configurations of bus, namely small van-based limousines that carry fewer than 15 passengers.

Construction

Coach and metro buses are based on their own chassis, sharing drivetrain and accessory components only. School buses are often built onto existing medium-duty truck chassis, reducing the cost of assembly and maintainence, which is especially useful for a fleet owner. Most modern buses are powered by inline six cylinder diesel engines, of varying capacities and outputs. Diesels are more fuel efficient, more durable and more adept to the heavy duty hauling a bus engine must endure. All new buses have automatic transmissions, letting the driver pay more attention to the road. Some European coach buses have sequential shift automatic transmissions, but these operate on the same principles of a manumatic automatic transmission.

Until the mid-80s, US school buses were also powered by gasoline engines, and available with manual transmissions. A few of these models still exist, used primarily in secondhand operations such at church groups or whitewater rafting clubs.