Talk:Bus travel

What to do with this article

I know I am the creator and main contributor myself... And I am in favor of keeping this article much like we have one on tips for rail travel a plethora of articles on flying and one on driving. But as I am currently developing a certain dislike for the "outline" status of all too many articles, I am wondering whether we should do something to this article to make it be considered "usable" and if so, what? I am thankful for suggestions. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:04, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

You said in a edit comment that the stuff might be too obvious. I think it is not, if we do it well. People used to their car might not think buses are an option, while the difference between long-haul bus travel in, say, Finland and Mali, may give room for some advice even for the seasoned bus traveller. --LPfi (talk) 12:07, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Name of page

Would like to suggest moving article back to Bus travel. The article and sub-articles are about traveling with buses not about buses (technical, history, manufacturers, ..). It is important for people searching on the internet for information about travelling with buses that this page and the Wikivoyager site be correctly indexed and identified in search results. The title of a page is key to that. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:13, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree. We could very well have an article for bus geeks, so the title is not specific enough. The old title is short enough for any need. --LPfi (talk) 12:03, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Images

I put a few images in the article, but I am afraid there is nothing really showing high-class long-haul buses. I would like an interior image, with passengers, showing what such travel really is like – thinking foremost about the only lower class uses buses crowd. --LPfi (talk) 12:11, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Flixbus buying out Megabus' mainland Europe services

Swept in from the pub

According to this press release, Flixbus is in the process of buying out Megabus' route network in continental Europe. Apparently Megabus will keep its routes in the United Kingdom, though. If and when the Megabus brand will invariably be subsumed into the Flixbus brand (just as happened to the "Meinfernbus" brand previously) we should change our articles accordingly. However, thus far there seem to be no major changes if I read the press release right. Prices will likely rise as Megabus has (at least in Germany) tried to undercut Flixbus prices and the market domination of Flixbus will only get worse. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:16, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Copyedits

Copyedits:

• "(in)famous" is a clichéed, ugly construction. Let's not be trite by using it. What we mean is infamous, which by the definition of the word, is used to describe something that is also famous. Avoid clchés. See infamous: "widely known, especially for something bad."
• "Currently", as has been discussed at WV:wta is redundant to the present tense. Let's not add meaningless words.
• Using "Wikivoyage" instead of "we" is clearer for the reader.

Ground Zero (talk) 01:58, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

These seem like good changes to me. —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:12, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

How fast are buses?

Swept in from the pub

Have a look at bus travel (or rather its edit history). What should we say about the top speed of buses, if anything? Hobbitschuster (talk) 10:51, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

110. I've told you in my edit summaries that I understand that most buses in Europe go 100, but there's a whole lot of countries outside of Europe. Having done some research, most countries have their rural speed limits around 110, especially some South American ones. I've also gone 110 on buses in Asia as well like Japan on a tour bus (although it was at night and it was speeding). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

But if you really insist. Revert me. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:38, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

But also, I changed this:

Almost all buses are designed for top speeds no higher than 110 km/h.

That's not about how fast they go, that's how fast they're built for. A 100km/h bus would be built for 120 minimum, and a 110 would be 130 minimum. If you state that it's designed to go 100, then that is a clear indication that it would go no more than 80. But I've let your way and reverted it, so we don't have another Frankenstein debacle again.

--SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:43, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Why? Why would you build a machine for performance that is not only not required, but often outright outlawed? Hobbitschuster (talk) 11:45, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

That's a similar question to why do we build cars up to 260km/h. Most of the time, we don't even go 120 that frequent. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:46, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

German Autobahns have a speed limit of shrug emoji and then there are racetracks. How often are buses found on racetracks? Or any road where they are allowed to exceed highway speeds (German highways have a blanket 100 km/h speed limit for most buses and even 80 km/h for older models) Hobbitschuster (talk) 11:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Back when these existed in Australia, buses were able to drive any speed limit. Most often went 130. But they don't exist anymore. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:51, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to travel 100km/h in a vehicle designed for 100km/h max speed :-) Sometimes you want to safely overtake, sometimes you get wind in your back or go downhill... 10-20% safety margin is definitely the minimum I'd want, and even with 30% the thing shouldn't start to disintegrate immediately :-) -- andree.sk(talk) 08:14, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

In my experience in several countries, the answer to the title question is invariably: "too slow".--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:54, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

TT, I believe that "too slow" is the average speed, but there are also moments of "much too fast", e.g., around sharp curves or along the side of a cliff.

This Quora discussion suggests that 100 mph (160 km/h) could be expected. However, this doesn't seem to take into account the speed rating for the tires, which can be as low as 75 mph (120 kmh) on heavier vehicles in the US market. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

If a 100 km/h bus would be built for 120 minimum, and buses designed to go 100 would go no more than 80, then I suppose the issue here is semantics. As extension to what SHB2000 writes, a bus designed for going 80 km/h on highways would be designed to keep that speed also going uphill, also having deteriorated somewhat by time, and not breaking (even over time) if surpassing the speed when going downhill. SBH2000 seems to be talking about design margins and Hobbitschuster about the nominal design top speed. I don't know whether buses in Australia and parts of Asia are intruding on the design margins, whether "all" buses are designed for the Australian speed, or whether buses for the Australian market are constructed differently (does somebody know how to check?). In Finland we did the rounding for metric railway gauge differently than in Russia, but trains go over the border relying on design margins, like micro SIM cards rely on design margins of the original full-size SIMs (the micro SIMs are thinner). We might try to find a wording that takes the design margins into account without emphasizing them. –LPfi (talk) 14:33, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

The (top) speed of buses is an interesting piece of trivia, but only that for most travellers. Discussing a top speed in bus travel seems fairly theoretical to me, since the actual travel speed is first of all dictated by traffic. More practical info in that section is perhaps a comparison to other modes of transport (for instance recommending rail travel at rush hours) and moving the Travel speed section towards the end of the article, as done in Tips_for_rail_travel#Speed_of_travel. D'Lemelo (talk) 17:14, 9 July 2021 (UTC)