What is the diffference between buses and coaches?

Question

What is the diffference between buses and coaches?

Answer 1

Buses are occupied by peasants, wheras coaches are occupied by people who think they are posh, but are in fact peasants.

Answer 2

Buses travel on generally repeated routes around local places and are paid for as you use them.Coaches travel  long distances and are normally pre booked and paid for.

Answer 3

Buses go from one end of the route to the other with many stops.

Coaches go from one end of the route to the other with few or no stops.

Answer 4

It's basically the use to which they are put that determines their desigantion.

A bus runs on a timetabled route with regualar stops and anyone can get on or off at any of these stops. A coach is a vehicle that is hired by its passengers (or organisation) and travells from point A to point B without anyone being free to hop on or off.

Theoretically you can use the same vehicle for either purpose and it's either a bus or a coach depending on what it's doing.

Bus is short for "omnibus" which comes from Latin and means "anywhere". That's why the passender carrying vehicles which travel on fixed routes covering the whole (in theory) of a town or city are called omnibusses, or busses for short.

Early ominibusses were horse drawn but they could also be electric. These had rubber tyres and got their current from a pair of overhead wires. They were called Trolley Busses. I don't think that there are any in public use these days in the UK. One of the last places to have them was Bournemouth.

Don't confuse them with trams. These could also be horse drawn or electric but run on rails.

You still see the word Omnibus in some bus company's names if they haven't been taken over by Arriva, Stagecoach or some other big operator.

Coaches are named after "coaches", the enclosed variety of private horse drawn carriage, which eventually became superseded by the motor car (motorised carriage). Modern coaches are normally more comfortably appointed than busses and are not used for public journeys in the same way that a bus is.

You can hop on and off a bus at any legal bus stop but you have to hire a coach for a private purpose. This includes hoiday tours, day trips or whatever.

Most people these days don't worry about the distinction and are sloppy so they call any big passenger carrying vehicle a bus.  Some of the answers demonstrate this.

Thank you for asking, it's a good question.

Answer 5

It depends which part of the world you are from, Here in the US buses general are referred to vehicles which are used to transport people from one point to another such as a school bus or city transit. When it comes to sightseeing or charter the bus is refered as a coach.

In a nutshell they are one in the same.

Answer 6

well a bus is lower less comfortable and used for short distance public transport, whereas a coach is higher up more comfortable, more seats and is usually only avalible by hire for longer journeys, hope this is more clear to you, xx

Answer 7

On a bus you do not have things like a toilet or have a Stuart service selling food & drinks while when traveling in coaches in the UK, depending on the coach company & distance of the jurney you do have a toilet & stuard. Also Coaches can travel alot faster on the moterway.

By the way sombody else said that coaches are not double deckers in the UK, but if they had checked out their answer first they would know that Citylink use double decker coaches.

Also coaches like buses do stick to the same route, like London to Holyhead via Chester or London to Glasgow/Edinburgh.

Answer 8

The amenities.

Answer 9

A bus is for short journeys and a coach is for long journeys?

And therefore coaches have toliets and stuff

I don't really know, that was just a guess.

Answer 10

I don't think there's any difference at all. It just depends on what people prefer to call them.

I've seen some of them about as luxurious as they can get, and they're called buses by the company that operates them. Greyhound also refers to its vehicles as buses.

In Detroit, the dilapidated and dirty ones that stop every other block on the city streets have been referred to as coaches for many years. Instead of "bus stop" signs, they read "board coach here."

Also, I've heard that many bus drivers nowadays want to be called coach operators instead.

Calling a bus a coach, in my opinion, is nothing more than politically correct language to somehow make it sound better.

Answer 11

The main difference in the UK is a coach is always single decker. A coach is also more comfortably equipped for usually longer journeys.

Answer 12

A bus is usually for shorter journeys and may have hard seats or at least less padded.  A bus is mostly just for travel from point A to point B.  

A coach is for longer journeys or for tours.  It will usually have a bathroom on board and nice plush seats with reading lights and maybe even personal air nozzles like on airplanes.  A coach is much nicer and has large spacious windows for viewing the scenery.  They also have a PA system so a tour guide can address the whole coach while on the road pointing out items and places of interest.  A coach gets you to point A to point Z in style and comfort.

Answer 13

...further to the previous answers.  Whilst most are right in their distinguishing as to what the vehicles are, except the one who said coaches were never double-deck (some are double deck, some are articulated and some are even both!). No-one so far has quite got the difference right between bus & coach services.  Bus services are less than 30 miles  between stops, UK drivers hours rules apply and BSOG (the old Fuel Duty Rebate) can be claimed. Coach services (over 30 miles between stops) are run on EU drivers hours rules  and are not eligible for BSOG, coach services do not need to follow a set route.

What confuses is that some sections of larger coach routes are run as local bus services.