FWIW, that's a _tiny_ bus. Typical city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150. At peak time on important routes they'll generally be mostly full.
The major capacity limit on buses is stopping. On busy systems at peak times, you'll tend to get clumping at stops, as similar routes line up one after another.
city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150
I have took an extensive look at this over the last weeks. A typical articulated bus can only carry about 20 to 30 passengers who are seated as comfortably as in a private car.
Partly that is because of the design of the buses. If the buses were redesigned to comfortably seat people, they could probably carry an additional 10 or 20 passengers who are comfortably seated.
Oh, I missed that point. I mean, personally I'd say that any bus offers a better ride than driving a car, in that you do not have to _drive_ the thing, but tastes differ, of course.
Ideally most urban bus routes would be short enough that healthy people can comfortably use them without sitting.
Realistically, the costs of operating a bus are pretty fixed, and bus networks have hard space-based caps on capacity (as I mention elsewhere stops in particular are a problem), so the priority will always be on getting as many people in the space as possible. It's hard to see why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses; it would degrade the system as a whole, and the ticket price would be unreasonably high.
Most people, also, will care more about "can I actually get on the bus for my 20 minute journey" than "if I get on, will I have a comfy seat", which tends to indicate a mostly-standing design with seating available for elderly and disabled people.
As an example, take my local system. Dublin's main bus system has about 1,300 buses in operation; almost all of these are double-deckers with a capacity of 90-100 people. The system is pretty much limited by availability of drivers. Fares are 2 euro for a 90 minute journey (or where the last leg of the journey is started within 90 minutes of the first one). Adopting your system, we'd need five times as many buses, so for a start we'd need 6,500 buses, along with maybe 15,000 drivers and another 5,000 or so support staff. It's hard to see how that could happen without dramatically increasing the cost. But also, at peak times, major bus corridors are full of buses, and major bus stops have buses queueing up. It would simply not be reasonable to 5x this.
why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses
The average car costs €300/month. Plus about the same amount of opportunity costs, missed by having to control the steering wheel for about an hour per day.
A public transport flatrate in Germany is only €59.
Seems like there is a huge gap in the middle for a better bus experience.
It would not degrade the system but wastly improve it. Because the buses would be additional buses. Each bus taking over 100 cars of the road. A bus can carry over 20 passengers and drive over 10 hours per day. While the average car ride carries 1.1 passengers or so and the car is only used 1 hour per day or so.
For instance the Paris Metro system used to have a first class carriage, until I think the late 80s.
And this would actually be worse, because you'd be talking about separate, likely less frequent buses. Most people will just get on the first thing that comes along, unless it's more expensive.
In general, on transport, people will pay a premium for speed; _express_ bus routes can charge a premium. For instance going to the airport I can take the city bus system for 2 euro and take over an hour (I'm on the wrong side of the city) or an express service that takes 20 minutes but costs 8 euro. I take the express one, and so do enough other people that it stays in business. And they'll pay for better seating for _long_ journeys. But 'long' appears to mean "at least an hour" and possibly "at least two hours".
(Semi-anecdotal evidence of this; in Ireland, a small country where most rail journeys not involving a transfer are <2 hours, first class _used_ to be a thing on trains, but it has been withdrawn from all services except Dublin-Belfast (2 hours) and Dublin-Cork (2.5 hours) because people simply weren't using it. You also see this with air travel; non-budget airlines have been cutting non-economy seating on short routes for years because it's hard to sell.)
If we double the number of buses, we can increase the number of seats per bus and still have a higher overall passenger capacity in the city.
In my city, I see buses that have only seated places all the time:
It is an interesting mix of a private and public service. Mostly it is used by people who prefer a better ride experience than on a public bus. And are fine with paying a much higher price per ride. They pay out of their own pocket to the service provider, Volkswagen. But for people with disabilities, using the Moia buses is free and paid by the city.
As mentioned, in a large bus system, the logistical challenges of doubling the number of buses would be formidable, and would likely lead to overall service degradation.
Are people paying for the _seats_, here, though, or for the more direct route? (AIUI it's a hybrid bus-taxi sort of thing where it only stops where people have indicated they want to be dropped off/picked up on an app). Like, if it was all-seats but operated on a normal bus route, I doubt people would pay for it.
I'd also question how sustainable it is; as far as I can see it's basically an experiment by VW, and likely a subsidised one. It feels like one of these things being prepped in case self-driving vehicles ever work properly. And in any case the scale is _tiny_; apparently a ridership of 11 million ever.
This is a simplification, and there's definitely wiggle room within those categories (for instance, there exist tram lines which are higher capacity than many metro lines, mostly through the use of extremely long tramsets) but _basically_ how it works; buses can only take you so far, capacity-wise.
I would think that as long as there are cars on the road, each new bus is a net positive, as it replaces 100 cars.
For me, knowing that the bus/tram is probably going to be packed and I won't be able to find a seat is a very good reason to try and find a different route/mode of transport, especially if I'm carrying something. I know that some people don't mind, but I really do, even though I'm young and reasonably fit. I'd rather sit down for 35 minutes than stand up for 20.