Chapter 4: Reaching the bus

In Chapter 3, I discussed the outline relationship between a person and the bus system. This chapter considers the process of reaching the bus in more detail – the journey along the footway to moving inside the vehicle. For completeness, I consider the footway to have the same needs and characteristics whether the journey is to or from the bus stop. In terms of the move into and out of the vehicle, these characteristics are actually quite different so these are considered separately in Sections 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 respectively. The emphasis in this chapter is to look at the issue from the perspective of the person. In terms of the person using the stop, I consider this in three phases – the pedestrian walking along the footway to or from the bus stop, the passenger on the bus and the intervening ‘pedenger’ phase as discussed in Chapter 3. I then consider some elements of the bus stop operation that create particular challenges for these processes in Section 4.5. Finally, I summarise the requirements for bus stop design from the perspectives of different people in Section 4.6.