Guided bus
bus that is capable of running in a guideway (guided optically, magnetically or by a central rail)
Guided buses are buses capable of being steered by external means, usually on a dedicated track or roll way that excludes other traffic, permitting the maintenance of schedules even during rush hours. Unlike railbuses, trolleybuses or rubber-tyred trams, guided buses are able to share road space with general traffic along conventional roads for part of their routes, or with buses on standard bus lanes. Guidance systems can be physical (such as kerbs or guide bars) or remote (such as optical or radio guidance).
A guided bus line can be categorised as bus rapid transit, and may be articulated and bi-articulated, allowing more passengers; however, not as many as light rail or trams, which are not constrained to a regulated maximum size in order to freely navigate public roads.
History
Precursors
The kerb-guided bus (KGB) guidance mechanism is a development of the early flangeways, pre-dating railways. The Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad
of 1809 therefore has a claim to be the earliest guided busway. There were earlier flangeways, but they did not carry passengers. From 1861 to 1872 another system with one central grooved rail was used in the Manchester region.
Modern examples
The first modern guided busway system was opened in 1980 in Essen, Germany. This was initially a demonstration track, but it was periodically expanded and is still in operation as of 2019.
The public source identifies “Guided bus” as bus that is capable of running in a guideway (guided optically, magnetically or by a central rail). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Guided, capable and running.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q836547. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1809, 1861, 1872 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guided bus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.