Lift capacities.

You called?

They measure lift capacity in people/persons only as a general estimate as you can't have scales to check on everyone. In the old days it was easier to tell if you were getting near capacity as the lift dipped by an inch or so.

Persons is, grammatically, the correct plural of person but gradually, over the last hundred years, the word people has become more common for the plural. I think that persons is still used in legal documents as they tend to follow the old traditions.

I still stick to a lot of the old and nearly obsolete words but rarely use persons.

When I'm writing letters of complaint etc. I certainly tend to use long and obscure words and it usually gets a better response.

 

As a general rule of thumb, 15 people = 1 ton

An empty double decker is (roughly) 11½ tons - fully loaded that rises to around 18 tons

 

So a bus takes 97.5 people

Do they calculate that there will always be someone half cut?

 

That used to be the conductors job @shiney - nowadays we get people who are 1½ all by themselves.

 

Do they still have conductors on buses? I don't travel on them as we don't have a bus service.

When we first moved in here we still had the Post Bus running. This was an eight seater run by the Post Office. It was the vehicle that the postman used for delivering the mail and the public paid a nominal fee to eventually be transported to the town with the sorting office. He normally had about four pickup points on his way back to the office.

Anyone remember the old 'Milk Trains'?