A-buses are a type of city bus in Copenhagen that run frequently and make use of many stops around the city. They were introduced on October 20, 2002, by the now-defunct HUR Trafik, to coincide with the opening of the first stage of the Copenhagen Metro. Today, the A-buses are run by Movia, who outsource operations to various contractors. The buses are easily identifiable as yellow with red corners at the front and back.
As of October 13, 2019, there are 6 A-bus lines, and a further three which have been discontinued and one further line which was integrated into the Cityring. During rush hour, the buses don't follow a specific timetable, but they run instead at regular intervals which can be as short as 3–4 minutes. In the evenings, there are about 10 minutes between each A-bus, while at night they run every 20 to 30 minutes. On some stretches, however, only every other bus serves the entirety of the route. In 2019, the seven, and later six, A-bus lines carried 52.9 million passengers, equivalent to 26.7% of all Movia's passengers.
A-buses can also found in Køge, Roskilde, Ringsted, Holbæk and Helsingør, where Movia has set up several routes in each town between 2009 and 2011. This is also the case in Aarhus, where Midttrafik runs an A-bus service.
General
A-buses were initially HUR Trafik's and now Movia's vision of bus rapid transit (BRT) for Copenhagen. Similar services are also found in many other larger cities, though under different names, such as the Metrobuses in Aalborg and blue buses in Stockholm. The concept involves creating routes with a frequent and direct service as their main attraction. They are easily identifiable with their red corners on the front-right and back-left sides. The bus stops are marked with red signs, and at many of them there is an automated countdown to the arrival of the next bus.
All the A-bus routes in Copenhagen run around the clock. The majority of the network runs on a time-interval based timetable. For most passengers there is no need for more specific information anyway as there is a departure every 10 minutes or less. On certain routes, and at night, a normal timetable is used as there is a longer period of time between buses.
Most of the A-bus lines use 13.7-metre long buses that allow space for plenty of passengers. However, on line 9A, a regular 12 metre bus is used, and on line 4A, a 13.2 metre long bus is used. Electric articulated buses are used on line 2A, and are able to charge at the final stop at each end of the route. It is possible to exit and enter buses using all doors on all six A-bus lines, including line 5C.
History
Early Plans
The early plans for the A-buses came along with the establishment of the Copenhagen Metro which opened in stages in 2002–3, and which also led to a series of changes and reductions to the existing bus network. The network had been largely unchanged from the time of the conversion of the tramways in the 1960s, though there were a series of minor and more major changes including the introduction of S-buses throughout the 1990s. The expectation was, however, that 300,000 vehicle hours would be saved per year with the Metro in service. There was a danger that these changes could be seen as one-sided cuts to the bus service, especially as areas outside of the Metro coverage would be affected.
The 1998 Transit Plan for the Capital Region of Denmark outlined a simplification of the bus service in central districts. A network consisting of S-buses, supplemented by local services, was to be gradually built up. With a 10-minute service as the basis, it was estimated that it would create an easy-to-understand and attractive basic network.
In the autumn of 1999, HUR Trafik (HT) prepared a paper on a new bus network in the Copenhagen and Frederiksberg Municipalities, that could be operational by the time of the opening of the Metro in October 2002. This was followed in spring 2000 by a concrete proposal to HT's board of directors. It referred to, amongst other things, HT's own experience with S-buses that had resulted in high customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it also referred to BRT systems that had been introduced in other cities. For example, in Stockholm the "blue bus" routes were popularly referred to as "the street metro". Similarly, Jönköping successfully set up two similar services in 1996 which served the busiest travel routes with direct bus links. Both cities also supplemented these with different local routes.