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A bus garage, also known as a bus depot, [lower-alpha 1] bus base or bus barn, is a facility where buses are stored and maintained. In many conurbations, bus garages are on the site of former car barns or tram sheds, where trams (streetcars) were stored, and the operation transferred to buses. In other areas, garages were built to replace horsebus yards or on virgin sites when populations were not as high as now.
Most bus garages will contain the following elements:
Smaller garages may contain the minimum engineering facilities, restricted to light servicing capabilities only. Garages may also contain recovery vehicles, often converted buses, although their incidence has declined with the use of contractors to recover break-downs, and the increase in reliability.
Overnight, the more valuable or regularly in-service buses will usually be stored in the interior of the garage, with less used or older service vehicles, and vehicles withdrawn for storage or awaiting disposal, stored externally. During the day, internal and external areas will see a variety of movements. Heritage vehicles are almost exclusively stored inside the garage.
Often garages will feature rest rooms for drivers assigned to 'as required' duties, whereby they may be required to drive relief or replacement buses in the event of breakdown. The garage may also have 'light duties' drivers, who merely move the buses internally around the garage, often called shunting. Shunter or light duty drivers are often employed in larger depot facilities and work night shifts in order to position buses in the correct order for morning departures from the depot with the first buses due to leave the depot parked logical order nearest the exit. Because they are driving on privately owned land in many jurisdictions a full bus licence may not be required to perform such tasks. In addition they may also perform other tasks such as cleaning buses, refuelling and light maintenance tasks.
Several bus companies such as London Buses and Lothian Buses used to operate multiple storage garages around their operating area, supplemented by a central works facility. Central works have declined with increase in sub-contract engineering, and improvements in mechanical reliability of bus designs. Also, the practice of routine mid-life refurbishment of bus fleets has declined, which has resulted in generally shorter service lives.
Bus garages will generally have large areas unobstructed by supporting columns as well as high roofs, especially for storage of double-decker buses. Recently[ timeframe? ] in London, the transfer of routes from double-decker operation to articulated buses has caused problems at some garages that were found to be too small to accommodate all the replacement buses, requiring splitting of allocations, or the building of new garages.
Some bus companies in the UK make use of outstations (or out-stations) as an additional bus storage facility. [1] These are generally outdoor parking locations, where buses are stored overnight or between peaks, which are more conveniently located for operations, reducing dead mileage. There does not appear to be a universal definition of an outstation, but it seems agreed that there are no maintenance facilities at a bus outstation. [2] [3] [4]
The largest bus depot in the world is Millennium Park Bus Depot In Delhi India, built for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. [5] [6] [7]
The Ottawa-Carleton Regional Transit Commission is the public transport agency that operates an integrated hub-and-spoke system including bus rapid transit, light metro, conventional transit bus, and door-to-door paratransit in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
London General Transport Services Limited, trading as Go-Ahead London, is a bus company operating in Greater London. It is a subsidiary of the Go-Ahead Group and operates services under contract to Transport for London. The company is named after the London General Omnibus Company, the principal operator of buses in London between 1855 and 1933.
A garage is a covered structure built for the purpose of parking, storing, protecting, maintaining, and/or repairing vehicles. Specific applications include:
Arriva London is a major bus company operating services in Greater London. It is a subsidiary of Arriva UK Bus and operates services under contract to Transport for London. It was formed in 1998 from a fusion of previously separate Arriva subsidiaries Grey-Green, Leaside Buses, Kentish Bus, London & Country and South London Transport. Operations are split between two registered companies, Arriva London North Limited and Arriva London South Limited.
London Sovereign Limited, trading as London Sovereign, is a bus company in North London. It is a subsidiary of RATP Dev Transit London and operates buses under contract to Transport for London.
London Central Bus Company Limited, trading as Go-Ahead London, is a bus company operating in South London. It is a subsidiary of the Go-Ahead Group and operates services under contract to Transport for London.
First Essex is a bus company operating services in the county of Essex. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup.
Midland Red was a bus company that operated in The Midlands from 1905 until 1981. It was one of the largest English bus companies, operating over a large area between Gloucester in the south and Derbyshire in the north, and from Northampton to the Welsh border. The company also manufactured buses.
A motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained when not being used. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine sheds" or, for short, just sheds. Facilities are provided for refuelling and replenishing water, lubricating oil and grease and, for steam engines, disposal of the ash. There are often workshops for day to day repairs and maintenance, although locomotive building and major overhauls are usually carried out in locomotive works.
A residential garage is a walled, roofed structure for storing a vehicle or vehicles that may be part of or attached to a home, or a separate outbuilding or shed. Residential garages typically have space for one or two cars, although three-car garages are used. When a garage is attached to a house, the garage typically has an entry door into the house, called the person door or man door, in contrast with the wider and taller door for vehicles, called the garage door, which can be raised to permit the entry and exit of a vehicle and then closed to secure the vehicle. A garage protects a vehicle from precipitation, and, if it is equipped with a locking garage door, it also protects the vehicle(s) from theft and vandalism. Most garages also serve multifunction duty as workshops for a variety of projects, including painting, woodworking, and assembly. Garages also may be used for other purposes as well, such as storage or entertainment.
London United Busways Limited, trading as London United, is a bus company operating mostly in west and south-west Greater London. It is a subsidiary of RATP Dev Transit London and operates services under contract to Transport for London.
MTA Regional Bus Operations operates local and express buses serving New York City in the United States out of 29 bus depots. These depots are located in all five boroughs of the city, plus one located in nearby Yonkers in Westchester County. 21 of these depots serve MTA New York City Transit (NYCT)'s bus operations, while the remaining eight serve the MTA Bus Company These facilities perform regular maintenance, cleaning, and painting of buses, as well as collection of revenue from bus fareboxes. Several of these depots were once car barns for streetcars, while others were built much later and have only served buses. Employees of the depots are represented by local divisions of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), particularly the TWU Local 100 and 101, or of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)'s Local's 726 for all depots in Staten Island, 1056 for Casey Stengel, Jamaica, and Queens Village Depots, and 1179 for JFK & Far Rockaway Depots.
A Bahnbetriebswerk is the equivalent of a locomotive depot on the German and Austrian railways. It is an installation that carries out the maintenance, minor repairs, refuelling and cleaning of locomotives and other motive power. In addition it organises the deployment of locomotives and crews. In the Deutsche Bahn, a Bahnbetriebswerk is known today as a Betriebshof; the ÖBB refer to it as a Zugförderungsstelle (Zf). Many other countries simply use the term 'depot'. The smaller facility, the Lokomotivstation akin to the British sub-depot or stabling point, is affiliated to a Bahnbetriebswerk.
Bus Vannin - styled as bus vannin - is the government-owned and operated bus service on the Isle of Man. The name was adopted in June 2009 to replace Isle of Man Transport. The company was founded on 1 October 1976, as National Transport, which was an amalgamation of two other operating companies.
Lothian Buses is the largest provider of bus services in and around Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. It is entirely municipally owned, being 91% owned by the City of Edinburgh Council, with the remainder owned by Midlothian, East Lothian and West Lothian councils, although it no longer provides bus services in West Lothian under the same name. Lothian Buses plc is registered in Annandale Street, Edinburgh as company number SC096849.
Wrexham and District Electric Tramways was a company that operated an electric tramway service in Wrexham, Wales between 1903 and 1914 when it was renamed Wrexham and District Transport Company Limited. Trams continued to operate until 1927.
Two-wheelers are a common sight and widely used in Japan. Of these, bicycles and scooters are the most common.
Coventry Corporation Transport was the operator of trams and motorbuses in Coventry, Warwickshire from 1912 to 1974. The operations of Coventry Corporation Transport passed to West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive in the local government reorganisation of 1974.
SAE J3105 is a recommended practice for automated connection devices (ACD) that mate chargers with battery electric buses and heavy-duty vehicles. The practice is maintained by the SAE International with the formal title "Electric Vehicle Power Transfer System Using Conductive Automated Connection Devices Recommended Practice", and was first issued in January 2020. It covers the general physical, electrical, functional, testing, and performance requirements for automated conductive DC power transfer systems intended for heavy duty vehicles, focusing primarily on transit buses.
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