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What a magnificent beast and the bus isn't bad too!!!
Moderator: PRT 065
Tim Williams wrote:Would have been an interesting trip. I mentioned Helsinki before and Tonyp mentioned that he doubted their buses are full low floor and he was correct. Even the 3 door buses are only low entrance and there are naturally quite a number of steps to negotiate at the rear door - I will try and dig up a photo.
If I remember correctly Tonyp was making the point that their loadings are not really high (Finland is a prosperous country) but they have long 3 axle urban buses in Helsinki, but not full low floor. I unfortunately did not spend a lot of time chasing around after buses, having promised my Finnish wife of many years, that we would spend time on bus-less islands and in a country town where her brother and family live!!
At risk of going too far off-topic, just to respond to above posts... the main reason I suspect that Helsinki buses are predominantly low entry is that they mostly perform a longer distance suburban function. The actual city centre is quite small - not too dissimilar to Australian cities and like say Melbourne is predominantly served by trams, despite being quite walkable (albeit frozen over in winter), to the extent that there are very few bus routes needing to operate within the city centre itself. There is also the metro line which in a similar manner to the future Sydney Metro, travels east-west from the far flung suburbs (by Helsinki standards) into and through the CBD to the other end. So this predominantly leaves buses to the task of filling in the gaps that the tram, metro and suburban/regional rail don't serve leading to relatively longer routes (by European standards) from far flung suburbs into the city centre with as well as feeders to these rail modes.tonyp wrote:My information would have come second hand from Mr OC Benz on this forum, but of course new bus purchases are happening all the time and no doubt fully low floor is now more standard across Europe, while ever-increasing demand would account for having extra doors. The five-door type standard artic that was originally only in Czech Republic (SOR) is now also on the German market from MAN.
Looking forward to your account of the Sydney airport train on the Sydney forum Tim, it sounds interesting!