Bus Depots

Bus Depots
A depot is a transport system’s operating base. It provides parking accommodation, servicing and maintenance facilities for vehicles, an administrative function, and facilities for staff. A fully enclosed depot is sometimes referred to as a garage.

An operator may have one depot or several, depending on its fleet size or geographic coverage. Most transport operators have their head offices at one of their depots. Operators with fleets of more than two or three vehicles should have the use of off-street depot facilities. A small operator will normally have facilities for only very basic servicing. The larger the operator, the greater is the scope for carrying out maintenance work in-house at the depot.

The principal operational tasks to be carried out at a bus depot are:

Allocating buses and crews to each duty.
Dispatching buses according to schedule.
Processing cash paid in by conductors or drivers.

Facilities required for these purposes are an office where crews report for duty, often referred to as the signing-on office, and a cash office, where conductors or drivers pay in the cash collected during their duties, in addition to offices for managerial and supervisory staff.

At larger depots it’s usually appropriate to provide canteen and medical facilities for staff, and in some cases accommodation for off-duty personnel and standby bus crews, and even overnight accommodation for crews.

Depot management and supervisory staff requiring office accommodation include the depot manager, operations and engineering managers, and administrative, personnel and accounts staff. Adequate and satisfactory storage will be required for operating, engineering, personnel and financial records as well as for equipment such as ticket machines, and tickets and associated documents such as waybills.

Bus servicing and maintenance facilities
The efficiency of every transport operator is heavily dependent on the quality and adequacy of vehicle servicing and maintenance facilities available to it. Without these it is virtually impossible to maintain vehicles properly. Nevertheless many undertakings are handicapped by the use of maintenance workshops which are poorly planned, inadequate in size or in terms of the facilities provided, are dirty and in poor repair.

Vehicle maintenance facilities fall into three broad categories:

Own-account or in-house workshops
Main motor dealers, agents and service centers
Roadside garages or workshops

Most large fleet operators have their own workshops. Own-account maintenance workshops may be specialist facilities catering only for vehicle maintenance, but are more commonly an integral part of an operating depot. Exactly what facilities are provided at any depot depends principally on its size, distance from other facilities, and availability of services from outside agents.

Operators of small fleets may have basic parking facilities, or very rudimentary facilities where some maintenance is carried out, and may employ one or two mechanics. But for other work most tend to rely largely on the services provided by commercial workshops.

Minimum servicing and maintenance requirements in even the smallest bus depot will normally include facilities for vehicle fuelling, washing and cleaning, inspection pits, tools and equipment for minor routine servicing and mechanical repairs, and facilities for changing and maintaining tires.

All but the smallest depots will require storage accommodation for spare parts, and office accommodation for supervisory staff. Larger depots will require more comprehensive workshop facilities in order to carry out a wider range of work, which would not normally be justifiable on cost grounds in a smaller workshop.

Availability of facilities externally will influence the extent of facilities required. For example, if there is a commercial fuelling station close by, the expense of installing dedicated fuel storage and dispensing equipment at a small depot may not be justifiable. Similarly, the requirement for maintenance equipment will be influenced by the availability and quality of manufacturer support and other commercial workshop facilities in the locality.

Where there are many individual vehicle owners, maintenance facilities are sometimes provided at terminals, where vehicles may be maintained between spells of duty. Many minor maintenance tasks are carried out while vehicles are waiting for their next trips.

Some bus terminals have facilities where this work can be carried out by the drivers themselves. At others there are full-time mechanics who provide maintenance services on a commercial basis. Bus owners’ associations can often help in this respect by organizing facilities that are available to all operators.

Bus parking
The practice of parking buses on public roads when they are not in service, and even worse, servicing and maintaining them at the roadside, is very common, particularly where the industry is dominated by small operators. But it can cause congestion and environmental degradation, and should be discouraged.

An important function of a bus depot is the accommodation of buses which are not immediately required for operation or maintenance. There must be sufficient space for parking all buses based at the depot, together with any others based elsewhere that require temporary accommodation, and for safe maneuvering of vehicles in and out of the parking area.

In the case of urban bus operations there will normally be a requirement for the entire fleet to be parked overnight, unless a significant number of vehicles are required for all-night operation. If possible, there should be room for future expansion, although this should be limited. Beyond a certain point, depending on circumstances, it’s preferable to open an additional depot rather than continue to expand existing facilities.

Parking will also be required for ancillary vehicles, and employees’ cars, motor cycles or bicycles. These should be parked separately from the buses.

If buses are parked in such a way that any one may be moved without first moving another bus, approximately 12 full-sized rigid single-deck buses (12.5 meters long) can be accommodated per 1,000 square meters.

Alternatively, buses may be parked in block formation, maximizing use of space but not permitting access to every bus without moving others. This will increase parking capacity by approximately 50%, to 18 per 1,000 square meters. By comparison, in a car park in which all cars accessible, approximately 50 can be accommodated per 1000 square meters.

Bus depot size and location
The size of a bus depot is usually stated in terms of the number of buses that it can accommodate, which may vary from fewer than 10 vehicles to several hundred. The area required for any given number of buses will vary according to the shape and layout of the site. With a good layout, the approximate area required for a depot for 100 full-sized buses will be 2 hectares, or 20,000 square meters, including buildings.

The space required per bus will decrease slightly as the number of buses increases since the proportion of the area occupied by buildings will decrease. There are also certain economies of scale. For example, the requirement for office accommodation, or fuel issuing equipment does not increase in proportion to the number of vehicles allocated to a depot.

There is no optimum depot size
The most appropriate size in a particular situation depends on a number of factors, and there is no single optimum size. It’s often debatable whether it’s better to have one large depot or several smaller ones. A balance must be achieved between minimizing dead mileage between the depot and route starting points, and having depots of an economic and manageable size.

For a large urban system, operating several hundreds of buses in a relatively compact area, the optimum size of a depot is normally between 100 and 175 buses, but up to 300 can be acceptable in some circumstances. Beyond this size control becomes more difficult, although there are examples of depots housing 500 buses or more.

Locate depots for accessibility and minimizing dead mileage
The location of a depot should be chosen for its accessibility and to minimize dead mileage, although there are other considerations, in particular the availability and cost of suitable land.

If an urban undertaking has only one depot, a central location is normally desirable, unless the cost of land makes this impossible, in which case a location close to one of the busier routes is preferable. If it has several depots, it’s usually better for them to be located in the suburbs, since this will be where most buses start and finish their days’ work, and dead mileage will be minimized.

If traffic congestion in a city is severe, a number of small depots, each conveniently located near the starting point of a route, may be preferable, in order to minimize the time lost by buses in traffic congestion between their depots and route starting points. In many cases, however, buses start work long before commencement of the normal working day, so that congestion is less of a problem at times when buses are traveling to and from their routes.

In the case of some large undertakings, operating depots are supplemented by a separate central workshop where major repairs and overhauls are carried out on behalf of the depots, and where specialist equipment and skills may be centralized.

Sometimes these workshops also carry out work for third parties on a significant scale. In undertakings with up to 500 vehicles it’s normally more efficient for this facility to be located at one of the operating depots. Although it’s desirable to separate the central works function from routine maintenance.

Environmental considerations
The activities of a bus depot and workshop can have a significant impact on the environment. If adequate measures are not taken they can cause serious damage.

The main potential problems are traffic congestion caused by buses entering and leaving the depot, pollution from exhaust fumes and excessive noise from the vehicles themselves and from other workshop activities.

Less visible, but often more serious, is environmental damage caused by waste oil or spilled fuel entering the drainage system or polluting nearby rivers. A vehicle workshop generates a considerable quantity of waste oil and if this is not disposed of properly it can cause serious pollution.

These environmental problems can be minimized with good design of the facilities, proper maintenance, and good discipline and housekeeping.