Great Western Coffee Shop

Due to the increasing risk associated with Bus Drivers getting sick with Covid-19, the Mayor's Office have announced that Boarding and exiting of all Buses from Monday will be from the middle doors only. This is to reduce contact with the drivers of these vehicles. Travel will be free as a result.

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Tweet from Jim Waterson - explaining the charging detail.....

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1251015663671488512 (https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1251015663671488512)

Seems sensible given that bus drivers do seem to have been in a vulnerable position. But frankly I still wouldn't take a bus right now.

I stand by my opinion that these London drivers are not catching it at work, or for sure whilst driving. Plenty of other places for them to catch it.

In London They are in a sealed cab with a huge screen, they have no interaction with customers, they don’t do ticketing.

And of course the vast majority of buses in the rest of the country have only one door, and that is at the front.

Some of the TfL routes on the outskirts are single door too. My local route 465 seems to have a mix of single and dual door. Not sure how the centre door ruling applies there  ???

Edit. - thinking about it, with fewer buses on the road they could just stop using the single door buses and use double door buses which would normally be allocated to other routes.

That would ony work in some areas. As far as I know our local operator, Faresaver, only has single door buses. I've certainly never a seen a double door one on their routes. Graham might know more of course.

Presumably the post was reference London... here at First Kernow we have 2 double door buses in a fleet of around 200!

I suspect that buses with two doors work well on routes that people are getting off and on at the same time - so Central London is a good example ... take a ride on my most oft uses 205 from Paddington to King's Cross and you'll see that in practise - off and on at Marylebone (or main road now), Baker Street,  Euston Square and Euston.  By contrast, the Melksham to Bath bus is load, load, load at Melksham, Whitley, Atworth and decant, decant in the centre of Bath and at the Bus station. Nature of the rural and town bus versus the big city bus.

Yes, sorry I was referring to London buses. I am aware that outside the large cities, buses are predominantly single door.

Used to have more and unfortunately, when the bell rang, it could only be reset by using the middle door.  No CCTV of course, poor visibility of the door & pupils (or all ages) used to try boarding un-noticed through them.
Most drivers would only use the front doors for boarding/exiting, and only when all were on would the middle doors be opened/closed as quickly as possible to reset the bell.
Double set of buttons on the floor/dash also confused the situation.
It also added to the dwell time.
Not popular to take on a run.
Would hope the modern ones would have sorted all those problems!

As a Londoner I've often been caught out elsewhere by jumping on as soon as the driver opens the door, only to be grumpily pushed aside by people trying to get off. It really does seem to slow things down on a busy route. It also means the wheelchair ramp has to be at the front corner, making it more vulnerable to damage from clipping the kerb.