|
| ||||
Charter a Bus | Tours |School Transportation |Churches| Travel Ideas | Casinos |SpecialsEquipment
Delta Charter Bus has an
excellent fleet of later model, wide body motor coaches and school type buses
that are fully
DOT and
CHP inspected and approved. All
our buses meet the highest standards for transporting passengers. Delta
Charter Bus has been offering quality, safe, professional transportation for
groups throughout the Central Valley, Bay Area and Nationwide for over 35
years. We would appreciate the opportunity to exceed your expectations for
great transportation.
We offer late model Van Hool and Prevost motor coaches as well as a CHP/SPAB
certified school-type bus fleet.
Please
take a look at our other company websites:
Click here for pictures of our buses Basic Bus Facts
Bus Defined A bus is a large, motorized, wheeled vehicle intended to carry numerous persons in addition to the driver. The name is a shortened version of omnibus, which means "for everyone".
History The omnibus, the first organized public transit system, may have originated in Nantes, France in 1826, when a retired army officer who had built public baths on the city's edge set up a short stage line between the center of town and his baths. When he discovered that passengers were just as interested in getting off at intermediate points as in patronizing his baths, he shifted the stage line's focus. His new voiture omnibus ("carriage for all") combined the functions of the hired hackney carriage with the stagecoach that traveled a predetermined route from inn to inn, carrying passengers and mail. His omnibus featured wooden benches that ran down the sides of the vehicle; entry was from the rear.
Whether by direct emulation, or because the idea was in the air, by 1832 the idea had been copied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons. A London newspaper reported in July 4, 1829 that "the new vehicle, called the omnibus, commenced running this morning from Paddington to the City". This bus service was operated by George Shillibeer.
In New York, omnibus service began in the same year, when Abraham Brower, an entrepreneur who had organized volunteer fire companies, established a route along Broadway starting at Bowling Green. Other American cities soon followed suit: Philadelphia in 1831, Boston in 1835 and Baltimore in 1844. In most cases, the city governments granted a private company—generally a small stableman already in the livery or freight-hauling business—an exclusive franchise to operate public coaches along a specified route. In return, the company agreed to maintain certain minimum levels of service—though one of these standards was not upholstery. The New York omnibus quickly moved into the urban consciousness. In 1831, New Yorker Washington Irving remarked of Britain's Reform Act (finally passed in 1832): "The great reform omnibus moves but slowly."
The omnibus had many repercussions for society, particularly in that it encouraged urbanization. Socially, the omnibus put city-dwellers, even if for only half an hour, into previously-unheard-of physical intimacy with strangers, squeezing them together knee-to-knee. Only the very poor remained excluded. A new division in urban society now came to the fore, dividing those who kept carriages from those who did not. The idea of the "carriage trade", the folk who never set foot in the streets, who had goods brought out from the shops for their appraisal, has its origins in the omnibus crush.
The omnibus also extended the reach of the North Atlantic post-Georgian, post-Federal city. The walk from the former village of Paddington to the business heart of London in the "City" was a brisk one for a young man in good condition. The omnibus offered the nearer suburbs more access to the inner city.
More intense urbanization was to follow. Within a very few years, the New York omnibus had a rival in the streetcar: the first streetcar ran along The Bowery, which offered the excellent improvement in amenity of riding on smooth iron rails rather than clattering over granite setts, called "Belgian blocks". The new streetcars were financed by John Mason, a wealthy banker, and built by an Irish contractor, John Stephenson. The streetcars would become even more centrally important than the omnibus in the future of urbanization.
When motorized transport proved successful after 1905, a motorized omnibus was for a time sometimes called an autobus.
Buses are an intrinsic part of everyday life, and play an important part in the social fabric of many countries.
City transit Most urban public transportation systems in North America rely chiefly on a bus network to provide services. The largest single city bus fleet in North America is in New York City.
Intercity travel Intercity bus services have become an important travel connection to smaller towns and rural areas in the United States that do not have airports or train service. A new phenomenon in intercity bus travel has been the Chinatown bus.
Tourism Some places have buses that resemble streetcars in order to attract tourists or otherwise look nice.
Luxury Motor Coaches Through the combination of technological advances and customer oriented service, the luxury motor coach industry was born. Today's coaches offered by Delta Charter excell in the realms of comfort, safety and reliability. |
© 2004 Vol-Ten Corporation P.U.C. 7913B D.O.T.
932151 |
With Delta Charter Bus: