 Buses have a really bad rap in North America, less so in Canada, but it's still a thing and I don't like it. Now of course there are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the biggest reasons, and one that I think gets discussed far too little, is that the buses here in Canada and the United States are just worse than our international counterparts. But why? And how? And could we do something to fix this? If you like videos about how soft the seats on buses are, you should subscribe and hit the bell icon. So you don't miss any future videos like my upcoming series on places that should have rapid transit, but don't. When a friend from Europe came to visit Toronto recently, we took a ride, naturally, on one of Toronto's newest and nicest buses. It was a hybrid delivered just a few years ago, and to be honest, they were amazed. Why is the ride so rough? The bus is rattling so much, is it going to fall apart? Why did the way-finding screens look like they were designed in the 1970s? Oh my goodness, the seats are so hard! I must say the comments startled me a little, but it did remind me of one I first moved to Toronto, where the buses felt notably less nice and rougher than those I was used to in Vancouver. But Vancouver isn't bus heaven. If you want to truly see what buses can do, a trip to Europe, Latin America, or Asia makes a ton of sense. Oh, and I should probably also say I'm likely going to say North America in this video at some point, but in this case, sorry Mexico, you don't count, your buses are too good. Now a big part of why I think transit buses are probably so much better in much of the rest of the world is that there are just so many more brands competing. For example, MAN, VDL, Volvo, Hess, Gania, and indeed even Mercedes. Yes, all of these years you could have been riding on a Mercedes-Benz Zittoro bus. Now you know. From these many brands, you'll see a ton of cool features. But what I'd actually argue you see the most of is a diversity of different buses. Currently in North America, bus manufacturers seem to be trying to pare down their offering. In fact, Vancouver recently ordered Nova bus suburban models, which are just city buses with one less door and bad seats, meant to be used on routes where coach buses are the correct answer. By comparison, in the rest of the world, you've got everything under the sun. You have the usual two-axle city buses and articulated buses, which also have longer 14 and 15 meter buses with three axles. More capacity than a regular city bus, but less than an articulated. There are also four-axle articulated bus variants. Oh, and you can also see bi-articulated buses in Europe and Latin America, with not just one, but two bendy bits. In fact, some models even look like trams, which is all the more reason the autonomous, bus rapid transit gadget bond from China is not a big deal. Meanwhile, despite the US and Canada having more road space than almost any other countries in the world, there is not a single double bendy boy to be found here. It's also common in the rest of the world to see buses with more doors. I talk a lot about this with trains, but it still holds true with buses. More doors mean people can get on and off of a vehicle more quickly, which makes your route faster and more pleasant. But in the US and Canada, 99.9% of regular city buses have two doors and 99.9% of articulated buses have three. But, surprising as it might be, that's not the case everywhere. In the rest of the world, 12-meter city buses with a third door behind the rear wheel are actually really common, and the same is true of articulated buses with four doors, again with one behind the rear wheel. As it turns out, there are even some articulated bus variants with two middle doors, meaning they have five doors in total, which is just crazy. At the same time, while transit planners and enthusiasts in North America gush over the idea of 100% low-floor trams, or light rail vehicles, we still order 70% low-floor buses, even though 100% low-floor buses are common in other parts of the world. If you're wondering how that works, this picture should help. Electric buses are of course also much more common. While you can count the number of major trolley bus systems in North America on one hand, they're all over the place in Europe. And even in cities that don't currently have trolleys, new systems are being set up, and in the meantime, battery electric buses are being ordered. In fact, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport has over 200 electric buses, just for the airport, more than most major transit systems in North America, just for the airport. In fact, in most of the world, buses have been getting electrified for a lot longer than here in North America, and by all kinds of different means. And of course, many of these cool features get combined to create incredible high-capacity buses that could serve all kinds of purposes that we couldn't even imagine in North America. By articulated electric trolley bus? Yes, oh, Switzerland. And for what it's worth, the experience onboard buses in Europe and, frankly, most of the world is also just better. Seats with more padding, better layouts, and higher quality materials are all common. The way-finding tends to be better, and the ride quality also tends to be a lot better. The first pretty average-looking London bus, which I took on my trip to London last year, on the last day of my trip to London, actually put me to sleep almost immediately. It was glorious. So why is it like this? Well, everyone's favorite thing, policies and regulation. In the US, there are by-America and similar rules, which means that federal dollars are not going to any European buses. And unfortunately, in this case, similar rules actually also do exist in Canada. At the same time, super-dated safety regulations also pretty obviously have an impact. I actually think it's worth addressing the idea that North American regulations are somehow safer, because this frequently comes up in transit enthusiast communities, but it's just not the case. Usually, the definition of safety used in North America is highly specific and highly pedantic. And while we might score very well for our definition of safety, when you actually look at safety from a perspective the average person would agree makes sense, it's kind of a wash as far as I can tell. At the same time, for a long time, there appeared to be little questioning as to whether regulations in North America that did things like horse trains to be twice as heavy as in Europe and the rest of the world were having a positive or negative impact on the transit experience. A nice parallel to kind of get what I'm talking about are automobile regulations. Part of the reason that trucks and SUVs are so much more common in North America is that our safer regulations don't take into account the safety of people outside of the car. So as long as everything inside your enormous truck mostly stays in one piece, no matter what you slam into, you're good. At the end of the day, most of the world moves far more people on public transportation than us, especially on things like buses. And so I think we can accept that maybe the rest of the world knows how to keep people safe. Now at the same time, the archaic rules and regulations of the North American bus market mean that we have only really two major players, Nova Bus and New Flyer. These two companies do admittedly produce better buses than most of the other remaining manufacturers in North America, but that isn't saying a ton. And both of these companies are actually based in Canada where, shocker, there's a lot less negative stereotyping around bus use. Now as I mentioned, there are smaller players in the North American bus market, like Pro Terra and BYD who produce electric buses, but their buses seem to be of sort of questionable quality, at least based on results in Toronto. There is also Gillig who only sells buses into the US market, but they also still sell buses that look like this. Now to be completely fair, most manufacturers do have models which look better. And Nova Bus in particular does produce some pretty decent looking models. Probably influenced by their parent company, Volvo. But even our best buses here in North America would probably look pretty meh on average in Europe. It just seems to be the case that in the rest of the world there are more buses to pick from. And so Europe and Asia and Latin America and Australia and other places around the world see more competition and better buses. Australia in particular is a pretty great example. They tend to buy their buses from overseas companies, and their buses are a lot nicer than the average one seen in North America. In fact, Brisbane is actually even getting beautiful new electric bi-articulated buses for its Metro project. To give some credit to North American transit agencies, some of them have actually tried to import European buses. Viva in York Region, for example, has ordered Van Hool buses straight from Belgium, and they're great, they're nicer than the buses that aren't from Belgium. And as it turns out, AC Transit in the Bay Area ordered a ton of Van Hool buses throughout the 2000s. But in recent years they've fallen in line, and now they purchase standard North American buses. Now you might wonder about prices. I certainly did, and I sort of expected that buses that were nicer would cost at least a little bit more. But it doesn't even seem conclusive that that's the case. I'm guessing that because in the rest of the world there are just so many companies competing for bus orders, prices are still similar, if not lower, because again, more competition drives down prices, and probably gives you better buses too. An interesting situation happened with Alexander Dennis, for example. Famous for their double-decker buses in the UK, years ago they started selling the Enviro 500 model in North America, and they've been wildly successful, so they actually ended up starting up a local production facility to produce buses and sell them directly into the North American market. And now they've actually been bought out by Canadian manufacturer New Flyer, which I can only hope will lead to New Flyer getting some influences from Alexander Dennis. Now what's so frustrating about all of this is that the actual drivetrains used on most North American buses are the exact same as the ones that would be used in other parts of the world, typically built by third-party companies. So the buses actually operate much as they would in other parts of the world, simply with a less nice, rattly bus shell around them. The idea that a bus will be adequate as long as it has the required number of seats, fuel economy, and keeps running for the required number of years is exactly why we have so many problems with public transit in North America. To say that user experience has taken the backseat would be an understatement. This approach gives transit agencies less flexibility, costs them more, and creates a worse experience for passengers as well as probably operators. So maybe the answer to better buses in North America is to just do what the rest of the world does. Thanks for watching.