Across assessed depots, manual depot movement takes 10 to over 35 minutes per vehicle per day, depending on depot layout, fleet size and shift organisation. At MZA Warsaw, the measured figure is about 35 minutes a day for each bus: parking, charging approach, washing and repositioning. Every one of those minutes is driver time. With a smartbus, a bus that drives itself inside the depot without a driver, that time returns to line service.
Where the minutes go
A bus spends its depot time in three blocks. Pull-in: the arrival procedure and the drive to a bay, often in reverse. Overnight: the move to a charging position, the drive through the wash, and the repositioning that lines the fleet up in departure order. Pull-out: the preparation and the drive to the exit. Each block is a manoeuvre made by a person at the wheel, and the last manoeuvre of a long shift happens in the depot.
The spread between 10 and over 35 minutes has three causes. Layout: tight bays, reverse parking and multi-storey depots cost more minutes than a flat site with drive-through lanes. Fleet size: a larger fleet means more repositioning before the first departures. Shift organisation: in some depots the line driver makes every move; in others, depot staff move buses between arrival and departure, and the minutes change hands without disappearing.
How to measure it in your own depot
Time the steps of one pull-in and one pull-out, count the repositioning moves between them on a normal night, and multiply by buses and days. Depot Minutes, a free online tool for depot time estimates, does the arithmetic with the operator’s own inputs. The Smartbus Ready assessment, the first step of the Smartbus Onboard Program, measures the same figure on site: a site survey and data exercise in the operator’s own depot, with the movements suited to automation and the layout constraints recorded beside the minutes.
What the smartbus changes
The driver hands over at the depot entrance and takes the bus at the exit. In between, the smartbus makes the movements suited to automation, at low speed, under the supervision of a Smartbus Coordinator in SmartDEPOT™ Mission Control. Every depot move the smartbus makes returns driver time to line service: a driver who signs on takes a bus that is ready at the exit, and a driver who signs off leaves the bus at the entrance. Drives itself between the depot entrance and the exit – extra driver time for line service.
Where this stands today, with who is on board where: Where does depot autonomy for city buses stand in 2026? More on the driver’s day: Giving time back to drivers.
Questions operators ask
Across assessed depots, 10 to over 35 minutes per vehicle per day. At MZA Warsaw the measured figure is about 35 minutes a day for each bus, counting parking, charging approach, washing and repositioning.
Depot layout, fleet size and shift organisation. Tight bays, reverse parking and multi-storey depots cost more minutes; a larger fleet needs more repositioning; and depots differ in whether the line driver or depot staff make the moves.
Time one pull-in and one pull-out step by step, count the repositioning moves of a normal night, and multiply by buses and days. Depot Minutes, a free online tool, runs the estimate with the operator’s own inputs; the Smartbus Ready assessment measures it on site.
Back to line service. The driver hands over at the depot entrance and takes a ready bus at the exit, so the minutes spent parking, repositioning and queuing for the wash become minutes on the route, and the last manoeuvre of a long shift is one the bus makes itself.
Operators who want their own number start with Depot Minutes and the Smartbus Onboard Program, a site survey and data exercise in their own depot.
Smartbuses in every depot.