We then got into the buses and found out how wonderful this new world is.
Each bus has a route, timetable and fare. If the bus travels inside the city, the fare is fixed and known in advance. If the route is municipal or interregional, then the carrier sets the tariff according to the market situation. The route - this means that the bus must go to the previously known stops and only on them, can not turn anywhere. The driver must not disembark or pick up passengers outside the stop of their route. Schedule - this means that at each stop it must be at a certain time.
The latter in Russia is respected in 70% of cases. It is clear that a lot can happen on the roads, including traffic jams due to an accident, but the bus must be on the final on time. This is important for the same bus station. This immediately means one very funny thing: if you take a bus with a long flight not at the beginning of the route, then be prepared that it is no, no, yes, it will pass your stop before the schedule. In recent years, this happens less and less.
Later - not scary, you just stand for a few more minutes. But earlier - this means that you can come in 5 minutes and look after the departing bus.
How to set the time when the bus will arrive? Urban transport is now equipped with GPS devices and an uplink for updating the position (you can see them directly on the map). Country buses - by decision of the carrier. Therefore, often the only way - is the stories of experienced how such a bus goes on the fact. We have accumulated enough of them in reviews of buses and directions, so you can check.
At the same time in these reviews you can find out what kind of bus will go, because replacements happen relatively rarely. But they do happen: if in aircraft an airplane is attached to a flight (and you know what you are flying on), on the railway you know something about a train, then in passenger road haulage what exactly will be served is not fixed.
Before the flight in the fleet, each bus passes a technical pre-trip inspection, a mark about this is put in the waybill. The driver passes a medical examination in the car park, both before the flight and after the flight is mandatory (after - to make sure that the driver did not drink anything on the way).
Buses are like the most stupid with holes in the windows, and the coolest with toilets, air conditioning, heaters and reclining seats, and with places of "business class". We in the team “Tutu-Buses” call them “dozens” by rating - they almost always get the highest score from passengers who are dumbfounded by such comfort.
Still in the bus you have to sit strapped on.
Even at the intercity if you want to go more than 8 hours a day, then there should be two drivers. One leads, the second sleeps.
What else is different "gray" flight?
Lack of security and basic standard. Since the gray carriers and bus stations are not united by uniform standards, there are no general requirements for what should be and how. For example, there are no uniform requirements for the safety of the bus: if at the airport, because of the input requirements, it is simply impossible to fly on a cardboard plane, then in the bus market you can safely meet something falling apart on the go. In our knowledge base, for example, buses, where you need to go with umbrellas, are particularly noted, because of the rusty holes in the roof rainwater falls inside the cabin. As at the top of the post.
Standards for drivers - their own special atmosphere. They are rather peculiarly respected. Specifically, the most painful place is the rest time between flights. If you are ready to entrust your life to a person who slept for 3 hours in the last two days, then I can suggest a couple of suburban destinations with gray flights.
About the other differences, I would have talked in another post about the rights of passengers - they are so interesting that we are attracting a third lawyer to figure it out.
Bus stations and routes
In Europe, most often the bus station is arranged as an airport. In the sense that it is self-sufficient and sells its services to carriers. We are just beginning to do this, because the market is only moving to this model. I personally know two such bus stations. These are St. Petersburg and Moscow railway stations, which sell the station as a service to carriers, and do not earn from tickets. Another source of income.
In practice, most of the bus stations in Russia earn only by selling tickets. And this creates an interesting feature - it is unprofitable for them that the carrier sells tickets itself, and they forbid him to sell tickets on their own. There are some stations that prefer the bus to leave empty, but just not to lose the exclusive right to sell.
Therefore, for the filling of buses in most cases the station is responsible. It aggregates tickets from carriers along its routes and transfers them to the storefront at retail ticket offices, online, and so on. Rare stations allow carriers to go to this showcase with their own tickets or allow carriers to sell tickets directly, synchronizing data with station data, but this is quite a difficult level of IT interaction.
That is, the official carrier largely depends on the station. The question is, why does he need the station. Because he needs to ensure the landing and disembarkation of passengers and their safety in the process. And because of the threat, including terrorist acts, security requirements are very serious. And here's the thing: to declare a new route, you need to protect it at the level of interaction with regulators. First you need to find the flow of passengers who need transportation, and justify it. For example, built a new residential neighborhood, and no one goes there. The carrier, the first to find this niche, can try to "stake out" the route for themselves. Or suddenly you have found the direction where the bus runs only in the mornings, and you realize that there are twice as many passengers and it is worthwhile to launch the evening flight. You can also apply. The essence of the route is to prove that there are a sufficient number of passengers who would like to leave but cannot yet.
As a rule, you cannot take a route that is already served by other buses or modes of transport (“we have the same, only at the end to the left”), you can only be given the final part, where to the left, but not all at once. You can’t do things like “the bus is going at 20:00 now, I’ll go at 19:50” - by this you “trim” someone’s transportation. The correct recommendation in this case is that the first carrier should use larger buses, and not add the second one.
The route can be carried out according to the standard only on the already existing stopping points, which are marked by the city. They are recorded in the register of stopping points. That is, it is impossible to take and draw a curve on the map - it is necessary that there be stops where the bus will go. It is here that the bus station (or bus station) appears on the scene, because it is the hub of buses entering or leaving the city. We must agree with him too - the bus station confirms the presence of apron power and so on. Accordingly, bus stations that are convenient for themselves can help to appear, and inconvenient ones can also interfere.
It is also an option to build your own bus station and carry it through, but it costs a lot of money and hellishly complicated approvals. Investments there in hundreds of millions of rubles and with a very long payback. However, I know that bus terminals are being built by carriers, for example, in Samara and in a number of cities they are going to make bus flights from airports. Accordingly, bus stations are needed near the airport. This is the norm for Europe, but this market is almost not developed here. Regions are systemically happy because this is a serious investment in the city.
The average bus station, as well as the average flight, according to my impressions, in Russia is loaded at 50-60 percent. The reason is uncivilized market, and in “pseudo-order” transportation, and in high competition with services such as Blablakar, where gray transportation suddenly go to finally avoid the requirement for professionalism of drivers and safety of transportation. There are no superprofits, but there is no such thing that someone could not cope with the flow. For comparison: by air and railway more than 50% of tickets are sold online, and in buses, by the most courageous estimates, no more than 5%, and the reality is most likely somewhere around 2-3%. In fact, the market should become a bit more standardized and regulated, and we will have a garden city like in Europe. We will grow up to this, but not immediately.
There are three fields of activity: intercity transportation (these are regular buses in the city, where a controller often goes inside), municipal (for example, from city to village in the same area and back) and interregional (this is to a city in another area). On intracity flights, which we now barely touch, there is a tariff regulation. That is, to take and request any price from the passenger will not work - it must be coordinated with the city. And on the municipal and interregional, this regulation is almost absent, that is, prices are regulated, in fact, only by the solvency of the population and competition between carriers.
The official carrier has the right to stop only at official stops. Do not be offended by the driver if he did not stop at the fifth pillar on the left - he is severely fined for this if a control system is installed on the bus.
Romance
In the US, the bus system is debugged and works like a clock. Well, almost like a clock. In Switzerland, it is still connected with the railway system and is inseparable from it: if at 13:26 the bus arrives at the station, and at 13:27 the train leaves the station, then you can be sure that you will have time. This builds their infrastructure to deliver people to work. A similar story in Japan, there are more examples of the world. And in England, up to 60% of bus tickets are sold online.
But the US intercity system is special. Their difference is that at some point the carriages united in the lobby and began to promote buses to the whole country. That is, somewhere they do not allow building a railway terminal at the city level, somewhere they are promoting their other interests - and they even order general advertising. Over the years, guys have invested in making the image of the bus romanticized into a movie. Remember any American film: there is almost always a bus - it is a symbol of something almost romantic, changes in life. Okay, don't remember Dogma.
We are just beginning this way. And, it seems, we will pave the path. Now we have entered ratings and reviews, and it’s already clear when and how to drive. For example, if you have a choice in time from Moscow to Petersburg, then you can easily see which carrier carries which flight (they won't tell you at the ticket office) and who has features, where it's comfortable, and where it's not. Where, if the bus breaks, cause another, and where you are left in the field. Who as relates to customers. And so on. Who goes officially and gives financial guarantees, who has drivers after medical control - the whole knowledge base is expanding, and soon it will begin to influence the purchase of tickets more. Then the market is civilizing simply because it is more profitable to be right. Well, we believe it.