Intercity bus service
Intercity bus services are of prime importance in lightly populated rural areas that often have little or no public transportation.
[5] A string of coaching inns operated as stopping points for travellers on the route between London and Liverpool by the mid 17th century.
The coach would depart every Monday and Thursday and took roughly ten days to make the journey during the summer months.
It was advertised with the following announcement: "However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring incidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester."
Coaches in this period travelled at around twelve miles per hour (19 km/h) and greatly increased the level of mobility in the country, both for people and for mail.
The development of railways in the 1830s spelt the end for the stagecoaches across Europe and America, with only a few companies surviving to provide services for short journeys and excursions until the early years of the 20th century.
Frustrated about being unable to sell a seven-passenger automobile on the showroom floor of the dealership where he worked, he purchased the vehicle himself and started using it to transport miners between Hibbing and Alice, Minnesota.
In 1914, Pennsylvania was the first state to pass regulations for bus service in order to prevent monopolies of the industry from forming.
A sleeper bus is an example of a vehicle with optimum amenity for the longest travel times, specially adapted for passengers to sleep in.
A coachway interchange is a term (in the United Kingdom) for a stopping place on the edge of a town, with connecting local transport.
For example, the Kempsey bus crash in Australia on 22 December 1989 involved two full tourist coaches, each traveling at 100 km/h (62 mph), colliding head-on: 35 people died and 41 were injured.
Passenger volume decreased as a result of expanding road and air travel, and urban decay that caused many neighborhoods with bus depots to become more dangerous.
They became popular with non-Chinese college students and others who wanted inexpensive transportation, and between 1997 and 2007 Greyhound lost 60% of its market share in the northeast United States to the Chinatown buses.
During the following decade, new bus lines such as Megabus and BoltBus emulated the Chinatown buses' practices of low prices and curbside stops on a much larger scale, both in the original Northeast Corridor and elsewhere, while introducing yield management techniques to the industry.
[30] New lower fares introduced by Greyhound on traditional medium-distance routes and rising gasoline prices have increased ridership across the network and made bus travel cheaper than all alternatives.
[35][36] On May 9, 1980, a freight ship collided with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, resulting in several vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, falling into the Tampa Bay.
On March 5, 2010, a bus operated by Tierra Santa Inc. crashed on Interstate 10 in Arizona, killing six and injuring sixteen passengers.
On September 30, 2002, another Greyhound driver was assaulted near Fresno, California, resulting in two passenger deaths after the bus then rolled off an embankment and crashed.
[30] In relatively developed regions of China where the motorway network is extensive, intercity coach is a common mean of transport between cities.
[42][43] There are numerous inter-city coach services between Hong Kong and various cities of Guangdong Province, e.g. Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Zhuhai.
The longest intercity bus service in Indonesia is a route operated by Antar Lintas Sumatera (ALS) connecting Medan in North Sumatra and Jember in East Java.
[45] The surge in intercity bus travel in Indonesia took place after the completion of Trans-Java highway section connecting Jakarta and Surabaya in 2018.
[50] Smaller vans are used for transportation in the mountainous north where narrow and dangerous roads make it impossible for the movement of larger buses.
As part of the regulation: According to the EU statistical pocketbook the European bus and coach fleet amount to 822,900 vehicles in 2013.
Intercity coach service in Germany became important in the decades following the Second World War, as the Deutsche Bundesbahn and the German federal post office operated numerous bus routes in major cities and metropolitan areas associated with each other.
Thus, since 1 January 2013 Coach services have been allowed if they are longer than 50 kilometers, which led to a fast-growing market with companies like Meinfernbus, Deinbus, Flixbus, ADAC Postbus, Berlin Linien Bus GmbH and City2City.
Ultimately market consolidation led to Flixbus operating over 90% of route kilometers offered by long distance buses in Germany.
They are generally slower and more expensive than train travel, but offering a more frequent service[54] These intercity coaches have stops at villages en route, providing public transport for rural residents.
They operate in barely inhabited areas, including mountains, and affect[clarification needed] the construction of a comprehensive railway network.
Switzerland is an exception to the rule that long-distance bus lines are established especially in countries with inadequate railway network, or in areas with low population density.
