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Originally Posted by Plafuldog
In Victoria, at least, the blocks are too short to handle articulated buses, especially downtown. I believe BC Transit was partially responsible for this model being designed/brought to North America
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Victoria and Kelowna were the first operators of the Double-deck buses, but you have to get some context as for why and where they are used.
The routes in Victoria at least, are only used on the longhaul (eg Sooke to Downtown, Downtown to the Ferry Terminal through Saanich) they have high wind resistance, but are operated on the highways. Though I generally find that the upper deck "wobbles" too much to be comfortable for people with motion sickness.
The Articulated bus on the other hand has the rear portion sway and requires a higher turning radius. Despite that they work better at highway speeds than the Doubledecker buses since they have lower wind resistance.
That said, the double-decker buses are better tourism buses since they can fit more people in to be able to look outside and over fences, where as conventional bus seating is designed to maximize the number of people, not sight-seeing.
Both can be combined into an articulated doubledecker bus, and that would likely beat the capacity of any proposed at-grade Light Rail, but I suspect that they would be much more dangerous to operate without their own BRT ROW since any t-boning of the bus would likely push over it's center of gravity.