Reasonable Transit Pitches

Matthew said:
There's a low floor, accessible, mid-engine articulated bus made by Van Hool apparently, I don't know how hard it is to get them, or why they're not more wide spread. Well I can imagine that it's trickier to split the engine, so maybe that's why they're not more widely manufactured. But yeah...
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Since most public transit buses are funded with a good chunk of federal money, there's a made in america requirement which severely limits the options. Some companies get around this by having "assembly plants" in america. I'm pretty sure new flyer does this, and I think they're a Canadian company. I could look it up, but I'm too lazy, if it's not new flyer, it's some company based in Canada, operating in America somewhere in Minnesota or something.

I don't think Van Hool is doing anything like this, but I do like they're buses and they seem to be doing the most advanced stuff with artic's
 
Van Hool USA exists, but I don't know if they're capable of the low floor artics with mid-engine "puller" configuration.
 
Matthew said:
Van Hool USA exists, but I don't know if they're capable of the low floor artics with mid-engine "puller" configuration.
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The three big suppliers of U.S. and Canada transit buses are Gillig, Nova (owned by Volvo) and New Flyer (which also owns NABI, the former 4th major builder).
Gillig does not offer artics. The artics from Nova, New Flyer, and the NABI division of New Flyer all have rear engine configurations with the rear axle powered. Gillig's plant is in California, Nova's main plant is in Quebec with another facility in N.Y, New Flyer's oldest plant is in Manitoba, but they have a large plant in MN that can build full buses, and they now own the NABI plant in Alabama.
Van Hool sells buses in the U.S. through a distributor, ABC Bus. They have primarily sold intercity buses, but they have sold some transit buses to U.S. operators that got Buy America waivers, A.C. Transit in Oakland has a large Van Hool fleet. As they are low-floor buses, the engines are essentially mounted in a large box in the interior of the front half, and do drive the second axle. However the engine mounting and transmission type is non-standard and not well supported in the U.S.
http://www.vanhool.be/eng/public transport/diesel/ag300usadieselEN.html
ABC Bus, while continuing to sell Van Hool intercity buses, recently announced that they would begin selling New Flyer transit buses to private sector buyers (universities, rental car companies, etc),
http://www.newflyer.com/index/news-...-bus-and-shuttle-operators-/menu.no/sec./home.

so ABC might not even be selling the Van Hool transit buses any more. Even with a Buy America waiver, transit agencies are not going to be interested in buying something that is not well supported for warranty, spare parts, or training mechanics.

At this point, the MBTA's only plans for new articulated buses are to buy 44 in a couple of years to replace the 2003 Neoplan CNG buses used on the 39, SL4, and SL5.
 
Yeah, figured it was something crummy like that.

Sigh. We really need to find a way to up capacity on existing bus routes. Maybe more frequency is the best bet.
 
It would be nice, seeing that I usually have to let 1 or 2 pass me up at peak times. Other routes need them too, like the 1, and the 66.

Of course the response would be "they need to re-examine all the bus stops and street corners that it turns at, to make sure they fit."

Actually, both could stand have more frequency instead. The 66 especially needs an "off-peak" frequency increase, which isn't as expensive to supply.
 
I feel like with the disaster Harvard Ave is (both traffic and design) artics wouldn't mesh well with the 66. However doubling the frequency would help considerably. The 57 and especially the 1 could use them though.
 
Kind of random but I'll toss this here: Davey mentioned an interest in applying signal priority to key bus routes and claimed that the city was letting DOT go ahead with it. Starting in Roxbury probably.

Supposedly the lack of priority on D street is a case of the city being recalcitrant though. Strange.
 
Matthew said:
Kind of random but I'll toss this here: Davey mentioned an interest in applying signal priority to key bus routes and claimed that the city was letting DOT go ahead with it. Starting in Roxbury probably.

Supposedly the lack of priority on D street is a case of the city being recalcitrant though. Strange.
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Wouldn't MassDOT have to work with MassPORT for D St, and not the city?
 
This is a minor gripe, but really, there's no reason to have the express bus stop that is nominally for South Station be located on Lincoln at Beach Street. It should really be moved to the South Station Bus Terminal - either inside of the terminal itself, curbside on Atlantic Avenue (would require a minor reroute of those buses to not turn left onto Kneeland), or on Kneeland between Utica and South Streets (where, during the evening peak, the bus usually ends up stopped for a non-trivial amount of time anyway.)

I can't for the life of me figure out why the stop is half a mile away from the station when the bus basically passes in front of it already.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Wouldn't MassDOT have to work with MassPORT for D St, and not the city?
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That occurred to me too late.

But if that were true then it seems that Davey would have fixed the matter already, since he chairs MassPORT.

You could email him and ask.
 
City of Boston controls all the signals in the Seaport, even if MassPort owns the actual street itself.

Speaking of the Seaport, I attended Cirque du Soleil last night over on Northern Ave past Harpoon Brewery. Quite a few people after the show took the SL2 back to South Station. We filled up one bus pretty quickly, so folks had to wait for a second to arrive (I was actually a little surprised they didn't have a few buses waiting since the show ends at a predictable time). Given their inane front-door boarding policy for Green Line, I expected the driver to make everyone board via the front door. Thankfully he opened all doors so the bus could load quickly, but of course that meant that a whole bunch of people got a free T ride. I suspect many of the riders didn't have a T pass since they were attending a special event (moreso than a typical rush hour crowd at least), so the T probably lost a few hundred fares because they have no way to quickly have people pay before boarding the bus. (And of course we sat at the D Street light for far too long.)

Just another example how the Silver Line is really a fail on so many levels...
 
Speaking of Silver Line failure, I give you: Courthouse Station at 5 p.m. on a regular workday:

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Idea: making an underground walkway to transfer between Green and Orange lines at Symphony and Mass Ave stations. and rename "Mass Ave" Orange Line after like a composer of symphonies (but one that's easy to pronounce like Stravinsky)
 
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Why? The underground Symphony platforms aren't even connected. And there's a lot of stuff in between them.
 
Matthew said:
Why? The underground Symphony platforms aren't even connected. And there's a lot of stuff in between them.
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Why: I think, as is, it's not really worth it. E-to-Orange traffic just won't be that substantive, since most E riders live close enough to the Orange Line that they'd just go there to begin with.

If, on the other hand, a D-E connector is built, and some trains from Brookline and Newton (and Needham) start going up Huntington, then I think the idea has real merit. Relieve some pressure on the inner core, increase access to Back Bay Station, and increase connectivity to Longwood Medical Area.

As for stuff between them, would it be a problem, per se, if they tunneled underneath Mass Ave itself (besides, you know, having to tear up Mass Ave for however long it takes)?
 
I'm actually a bit puzzled how everything gets squeezed into that Symphony intersection. I tried to figure it out a bit last year, but just guesswork. Remember, it's a 1930s WPA grade separation, plus a trolley tunnel added in the 1940s. So there's a lot of stuff going on under the surface. Underneath Mass Ave along the way to the Orange Line, it might be cleared, because if you look at old photos it's obviously been urban renewal bombed. Or maybe that doesn't help. And I don't know about the St Botolph block. I think those buildings just past St Botolph are older. Anyway, the distance is about 500-600 feet underground just from the inbound Green Line platform. And then you have to figure out how to get onto the Orange Line platform. You'd probably have to have it come up somehow and open up into the mezzanine level. Maybe even take the Subway (one of my favorite juxtapositions in the city). Just messy all around.

In favor of the tunnel is the fact that Symphony station is in desperate need of renovation and the MBTA is legally obligated to fix the accessibility issues some day. So there might be some impetus behind doing something radical to fix it. On the other hand, Hynes Convention Center is a much bigger priority so I imagine that Symphony is just going to have to wait.

In disfavor is the fact that it's really an easy and decent walk aboveground, especially once they finish the streetscape project and finally bring Symphony into compliance with ADA. And it's not really clear, as you noted, what travel patterns it would serve.

For me the major annoyance with the Green/Orange connection is that I most often use the "B" and "D" branches, which means I often have to make a connection to a different Green Line branch if I'm going to go to the Orange Line. So I don't generally do that, I either walk at BBY, Chinatown or Park, or just take a crosstown bus of some sort. And for residents near Symphony a big annoyance is that there is no nearby 39 bus stop because of the grade separation.

Maybe in the other thread we could speculate about the dream of a Symphony superstation that encompasses Green, Orange and a Mass Ave subway.
 
Lets also remember that the NU and Ruggles stops are just about as close as Symphony and Mass Ave.

Hmmm, I wonder if there would be any value to connecting NU's tunnel system to either station...
 
DominusNovus said:
Lets also remember that the NU and Ruggles stops are just about as close as Symphony and Mass Ave.
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Sorry, gotta disagree with you there. Symphony and Mass Ave are about 620 feet apart (about as close as Park and Downtown Crossing are to each other). The Northeastern stop and Ruggles are at least twice that, depending on where at Ruggles you measure from.
 
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