A bus garage , also known as a bus depot , 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.
16-609: Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage was a public bus garage in Moscow, designed in 1926 by Konstantin Melnikov (floorplan concept and architectural design) and Vladimir Shukhov ( structural engineering ). The building, completed in 1927, was an example of applying avant-garde architectural methods to an industrial facility. Neglected for decades and nearly condemned to demolition, it was restored in 2007–2008 and reopened in September 2008 as
32-520: 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 in London,
48-399: A connected platform to predict and allocate loads in real-time and meet on-demand requests. Dead mileage has increasingly become an issue with privatised competition for bus services, most notable with the privatisation of London bus services . Often operators will come to an arrangement to share garage facilities to reduce dead mileage. Some air charter companies lease out their planes at
64-651: A gallery of modern art. In 1925, Melnikov travelled to Paris . Back in Moscow, Melnikov saw a new fleet of Leyland buses tucked into a narrow yard in Bolshaya Ordynka Street. He approached city transportation board and sold his idea for a free-flow garage. It was built on a large lot in Bakhmetevskaya Street, 11 (then a working class suburb north from Garden Ring ; later, the street was renamed Obraztsova Street). Bakhmetevsky Garage, sometimes associated with constructivist architecture ,
80-463: A pilot living in New York to a flight from Denver to Los Angeles, and the pilot would simply catch any flight going to Denver, either wearing their uniform or showing ID, in lieu of buying a ticket. Also, some transport companies will allow employees to use the service when off duty, such as a city bus line allowing an off-duty driver to commute to and from work for free. Additionally, inspectors from
96-425: A regulatory agency may use transport on a deadhead basis to do inspections, such as a Federal Railroad Administration inspector riding a freight train to inspect for safety violations. Dead mileage routinely occurs when a route starts or finishes in a location away from a terminal or maintenance facility, and the start or end of a shift requires moving the vehicle without passengers. Dead mileage incurs costs for
112-481: A universal definition of an outstation, but it seems agreed that there are no maintenance facilities at a bus outstation. The largest bus depot in the world is Millennium Park Bus Depot In Delhi India, built for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Dead mileage Dead mileage , dead running , light running , empty cars or deadheading in public transport and empty leg in air charter
128-495: Is when a revenue-gaining vehicle operates without carrying or accepting passengers, such as when coming from a garage to begin its first trip of the day. Similar terms in the UK include empty coaching stock (ECS) move and dead in tow (DIT). The term deadheading or jumpseating also applies to the practice of allowing employees of a common carrier to travel in a vehicle as a non-revenue passenger. For example, an airline might assign
144-717: The bus company vacated the building and the City Hall donated it to the Moscow Hasidic Jewish Community Center for redevelopment, on condition that the Community Center build a public school on the same lot and return it to the City. The Community Center approached architect Alexey Vorontsov to design the whole project. Bus garage Most bus garages will contain the following elements: Smaller garages may contain
160-408: 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
176-697: 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
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#1732791559669192-514: 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
208-465: The operator in terms of non-revenue earning fuel use, wages, and a reduction in the driver's legal availability for revenue-generating driving. Operators will often reduce dead mileage by starting or finishing the first or last service of the day, or shift, at a garage along the route, a so-called part service or part route . Dead mileage may also be reduced by the operation of routes specifically timed and routed to facilitate bus movements rather than
224-455: The passenger need. Often changing routes slightly (and ensuring high on time performance) can greatly increase the useful time-to-dead-mileage ratio for both crew and vehicles. Cutting-edge technology has been also leveraged to preempt dead miles and find innovative ways to reduce downtime or in some cases replenish the empty or dead miles with revenue-generating backhaul. Artificial intelligence and other data science techniques can be used in
240-572: 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. 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
256-428: Was in fact styled in an indefinite red-brick industrial livery; circular windows in the attic are the only avant-garde features (and even these were destroyed decades ago). Melnikov also designed workshops and office buildings on the same lot, filling the irregular voids made by placing a parallelogram-shaped garage on a larger, rectangular lot. In 1990, the aging garage was listed as an architectural memorial. In 2001,
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