City Transit Bus Coloring Page with Free PDF for Kids

City Transit Bus: History & Fun Facts

From Streetcars to Rubber Tires

Many American cities ran their public transit on electric streetcars through the early 1900s before gradually switching to motor buses running on regular streets, a shift that sped up through the 1930s and 1940s as buses offered more flexible routes without fixed rails. General Motors built the widely used New Look transit bus starting in 1959, a boxy, high-floor design with a flat front and large flip-down windows that became the standard city bus shape for decades.

Those older transit buses required riders to climb two or three steep steps just to board, a design that worked fine for most adults but shut out wheelchair users and anyone with mobility trouble entirely.

The Low-Floor Bus Changes Boarding

The low-floor transit bus, with a cabin that sits close to curb height and no interior steps to climb, became widely available in the United States starting in the early 1990s after the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 required new public buses to be accessible to wheelchair users. Engineers achieved that low floor by moving the engine to the rear and running it sideways under a raised rear platform, freeing up the entire front and middle floor to sit just inches above the pavement.

That low step-in height, traced along the bottom edge of the bus on this coloring page, also speeds up boarding for riders with strollers, shopping carts, or simply full arms.

Two Doors Move More Riders

Modern transit buses commonly carry two separate folding doors, letting passengers exit through the rear door while new riders board through the front, cutting the time a bus sits stopped at each curb. That two-door layout, both visible on this page, became standard on busy city routes precisely because a single door forces every rider through one narrow bottleneck twice, once boarding and once leaving.

Kneeling suspension systems, which lower the front of the bus a few extra inches at a stop, work alongside the low floor to close the gap between curb and cabin even further for riders who need it.

Route Numbers and Wide Windshields

The lit display panel above a transit bus windshield, shown on this page just above the curved glass, tells waiting riders the route number and destination before the bus even reaches the stop, a feature that grew more important as cities added dozens of overlapping routes through the same downtown streets. The wide, deeply curved windshield on a modern low-floor bus also gives the driver a much broader forward view than the smaller, flatter windshields used on older transit buses.

Bending in the Middle

Some cities run an even longer articulated transit bus, built with a flexible accordion joint in the middle that lets one extra-long vehicle carry far more riders than a standard bus while still turning corners on regular city streets. That bending design traces back to European manufacturers in the 1970s and has since spread to busy American transit routes that need extra capacity without adding a second bus to the schedule.