bus
Definition
A large motor vehicle carrying passengers by road, typically one serving the public on a fixed route and for a fare
To remember it
Picture the red school bus with yellow stripes and think of how it transports children to school. The bus's bright colors and smiling faces make it easy to remember what a bus looks like.
Examples
- A1
I take the bus to school every morning because my house is too far away to walk, and the bus stop is just a short distance from my front door.
- A1
The number 42 bus goes from the town centre to the airport every thirty minutes, and the journey takes about forty-five minutes depending on the traffic on the main road.
- A2
During rush hour the buses are so crowded that sometimes you have to let two or three buses pass before you can squeeze yourself onto one with your heavy bag and your weekly shopping.
- A2
The tour bus picked up passengers from their hotels early in the morning and took them to all the main tourist attractions in the city, with a multilingual guide who explained the history of each site along the way.
- B1
City planners have increasingly recognised that investing in high-quality bus rapid transit systems — with dedicated bus lanes, level boarding platforms, real-time passenger information, and frequent service — can deliver public transport improvements comparable to light rail at a fraction of the cost, making it possible to extend high-quality transit to a much wider area of the city within a given budget.
- B1
The electric bus has emerged as a promising alternative to diesel buses for urban transit systems, offering lower operating costs over the lifetime of the vehicle (despite higher upfront purchase prices), zero tailpipe emissions that improve urban air quality, reduced noise levels that benefit both passengers and residents living along bus routes, and lower maintenance requirements because electric drivetrains have far fewer moving parts than internal combustion engines.
- B2
The deregulation of the long-distance bus market in many European countries, following the model established earlier in the United States, has led to the rapid growth of intercity bus services that compete directly with rail on price (often charging a fraction of the equivalent train fare), attract a different demographic of travellers who prioritise cost over journey time, and pose difficult questions for public policy about whether efficient markets in long-distance transport are compatible with obligations to maintain universal service standards and cross-subsidise routes that are commercially unviable but socially necessary.
- B2
The concept of "bus bunching" — the tendency of buses on a route to cluster together rather than maintaining even spacing, causing long waits followed by multiple buses arriving together — is one of the most studied phenomena in transit operations, arising because a bus that falls slightly behind schedule picks up more passengers (increasing its dwell time at stops), while the following bus picks up fewer (reducing its dwell time), creating a feedback loop that progressively widens the gap between the late bus and the punctual bus and narrows the gap between the punctual bus and the bus behind it.
