Which bus depot has the Best Maintenance? and which one has the Worst?

[XcelsiorBoii4888]

i've been hearing lots of news about the Maintenance and how well depots take care of their buses. So Im curious in your opinion, which depot has the best and which has the worst.

[B36 Via Ave U]

This is a very good thread,In my opinion, Jackie Gleason, from my experiences has the best matinence,their C40's and Orion VII's are top notch even their EX CP 05's are in good shape at Gleason, worst, LGA, their EX BEE Lines, don't ask,and they killed buses like 9098 and 8756 which they got and btw, i was just about to make a thread like this .

[XcelsiorBoii4888]

This is a very good thread,In my opinion, Jackie Gleason, from my experiences has the best matinence,their C40's and Orion VII's are top notch even their EX CP 05's are in good shape at Gleason, worst, LGA, their EX BEE Lines, don't ask,and they killed buses like 9098 and 8756 which they got and btw, i was just about to make a thread like this .

 

 

sorry i took your thread lol. and i hearing alot about LGA's maintenance, 9098 was a good bus! and Gleason is pretty good. im thinking Queens Village best with the buses, and worst is Castleton. Im not liking how everytime i get on a 3g or xd40 its tagged! and boy the LFS are gone!!

[Threxx]

Grand Avenue has decent maintenance. TU, despite me loving the name, is poor.

 

Ulmer Park is ok too.

[B36 Via Ave U]

sorry i took your thread lol. and i hearing alot about LGA's maintenance, 9098 was a good bus! and Gleason is pretty good. im thinking Queens Village best with the buses, and worst is Castleton. Im not liking how everytime i get on a 3g or xd40 its tagged! and boy the LFS are gone!!

 

 

Yea, RIP 8017, i heard their 05's arent that good either, Castleton, yea, I miss 9098(first bus I ever rode) and all the other 96 rts's in Ulmer, and agreed Threex, UP has good matinence too, QV, i've heard they have good matinence, never been on any of their routes, only a bus or two, both 96 Rts's on the Q shuttle, i remember 9002 from around 9/10 or 11 2010, it was a mess on the outside, but inside, completely the opposite.

[S78 via Hylan]

From my observations:

 

Excellent maintenance: Quill, Gleason, Grand Av, Flatbush, East New York

 

Average maintenance (sometimes good, other times could be better): Fresh Pond, Yukon, Kingsbridge

 

Worst maintenance: Castleton (due to BTE's already getting tagged and dirty), LGA

 

More to add later.

[XcelsiorBoii4888]

From my observations:

 

Excellent maintenance: Quill, Gleason, Grand Av, Flatbush

 

Average maintenance (sometimes good, other times could be better): Fresh Pond, Yukon

 

Worst maintenance: Castleton (due to BTE's already getting tagged and dirty), LGA

 

More to add later.

 

 

YESS THE BTE's are tagged 7063 is a horror OMG like no joke the whole back from the high seats all on the windows and back and seats and back of seats full of markers make me want to not sit there. 4877 tagged 4894 tagged 4870 tagged 7068 tagged 7077 tagged 7080 tagged. i give up and the LFS are hell 8028 8023 8005 8009.

[MHV9218]

I can only speak for what I know, but the best maintenance I see externally is Grand Avenue, the best internally would be East New York, and generally some of the best overall is at Quill. West Farms and 126th do extremely good jobs considering the conditions as well.

 

LGA and Tuskegee come to mind for worst maintenance.

[XcelsiorBoii4888]

I can only speak for what I know, but the best maintenance I see externally is Grand Avenue, the best internally would be East New York, and generally some of the best overall is at Quill. West Farms and 126th do extremely good jobs considering the conditions as well.

 

LGA and Tuskegee come to mind for worst maintenance.

 

 

wow and yup East New York does it thing! grand avenue havent rode any of their buses...that depot is quiet to me...never hear anything about it

[gtNovaBusRTS9369]

Best: Queens Village, Jamaica, East New York, Grand Avenue, Michael J. Quill.

Worst: LaGuardia (c'mon now no reason as to why we shouldn't know this by now), JFK, all bronx depots (besides WF).

[Orion VII 4 Life]

Gotta go with Quill for best, LGA for worst.

[User]

I've seen some people on this forum look down at Jamaica depot for the way they maintain their buses. But I never found why.

[KeystoneRegional]

Best: Queens Village, Jackie Gleason and Michael J. Quill.

Worst: Jamaica, LaGuardia, The Entire Bronx Division, The Entire Staten Island Division.

 

To answer your question Brett: Bus parts are loose and some buses have missing parts, they're clearly not the best.

[Grand Concourse]

From my observations:

 

Excellent maintenance: Quill, Gleason, Grand Av, Flatbush

 

Average maintenance (sometimes good, other times could be better): Fresh Pond, Yukon

 

Worst maintenance: Castleton (due to BTE's already getting tagged and dirty), LGA

 

More to add later.

 

Geez, nice new buses that gets tagged up by a.holes in SI... This is why we can't have nice things.

[Cait Sith]

YESS THE BTE's are tagged 7063 is a horror OMG like no joke the whole back from the high seats all on the windows and back and seats and back of seats full of markers make me want to not sit there. 4877 tagged 4894 tagged 4870 tagged 7068 tagged 7077 tagged 7080 tagged. i give up and the LFS are hell 8028 8023 8005 8009.

 

 

Newflash, bub. The BTEs in all three boroughs are tagged up.....I was on an Xcelsior on the B1 today, the seats were all tagged up at the back....it ain't just Staten Island...

 

As for Maintenance....

 

Manhattan : Quill (hands down the best in the borough), well pretty much the rest of them, all the depots in the city are pretty good.

Queens : Everything except LaGuardia...even JFK turned themselves around...

Brooklyn : They are all pretty good, Grand Ave & ENY takes the cake though.

Staten Island : Everything but Yukon.....

The Bronx : Eh, it depends on what you look at, really....the artics in all the regular depots are beat down to all hell, but the 40fters are in pretty good shape even at West Farms.....I think Eastchester & Gun Hill gets it done better than the others.

[BrooklynIRT]

You know, people have discussed this on several occasions for years. So this gives me an opportunity to ask a big question:

 

Considering the fact that bus maintainers and mechanics (at least in the bad depots) are not supervised very much, especially compared to bus operators (although this may be less true now than it used to be), why is it that the maintenance staff in certain depots does a better job maintaining the buses than the maintenance staff in others? I would think that they would all be doing the same level of maintenance on the buses in every depot since they all work for the same agency. My guess is that it comes down to how much money MTA spends on each depot, and they spend more money on certain depots so that they can have more supervision at those depots to make sure that the maintenance staff is doing its job. Going by this logic, I completely understand why the Manhattan buses are always in tip-top shape, because all the tourists go to Manhattan and because Manhattan is, well, Manhattan.

 

But if you have buses from depots such as Gun Hill going through neighborhoods like Pelham Pkwy, Morris Park, and Parkchester, why is it that Gun Hill [reportedly] continues to lag in the maintenance department? And is it that you have buses being maintained so well in depots such as West Farms, many of whose bus routes go through the worst neighborhoods (and stay there from first stop to last stop!) in the Bronx and NYC? What exactly is MTA's rationale for allowing certain depots to lag so much in the maintenance department? This has puzzled me for years. My guess is that most depots in boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens cannot really get away with it since those boroughs have Manhattan-like areas and tourist attractions of their own (that are only accessible by bus) while the Bronx does not have too many "Manhattan-like" areas and few tourist attractions except for Yankee Stadium, and everybody just uses trains to get there. I do not know; I am just throwing stuff out here. If somebody could enlighten me I would appreciate it. Another thing I realized a while back about Brooklyn is that at least one line from every Brooklyn depot except Ulmer Park serves Downtown Brooklyn.

 

Also, what is BTE? Does it refer to buses that were in the bus test/evaluation program?

[MHV9218]

Newflash, bub. The BTEs in all three boroughs are tagged up.....I was on an Xcelsior on the B1 today, the seats were all tagged up at the back....it ain't just Staten Island...

 

As for Maintenance....

 

Manhattan : Quill (hands down the best in the borough), well pretty much the rest of them, all the depots in the city are pretty good.

 

 

Ah you say that and you're just begging for me to give my rant haha! Quill and 126th are top stuff (usually), and Manhattanville generally keeps its act together (less than I'd like though). Tusekegee though. It ain't good. They beat those 5300s to death, to think some of them retired even before the 1000s is crazy, that's a whole two-three year age gap. Last summer and up until the LFSAs showed up there'd be something like 5-6 breakdowns a day on the Lex, and that's ignoring the buses OOS. Even now, the 5500s are in terrible shape and from what I hear the LFSAs are even experiencing breakdowns. That's all mechanical too -- the buses never look good and are awful inside. I say this as a relatively regular commuter on the M101 in East Harlem / M103 in Chinatown, I'm sick of it.

 

This is the native position of the Tuskegee 5300:

 

 

 

You know, people have discussed this on several occasions for years. So this gives me an opportunity to ask a big question:

 

Considering the fact that bus maintainers and mechanics (at least in the bad depots) are not supervised very much, especially compared to bus operators (although this may be less true now than it used to be), why is it that the maintenance staff in certain depots does a better job maintaining the buses than the maintenance staff in others? I would think that they would all be doing the same level of maintenance on the buses in every depot since they all work for the same agency. My guess is that it comes down to how much money MTA spends on each depot, and they spend more money on certain depots so that they can have more supervision at those depots to make sure that the maintenance staff is doing its job. Going by this logic, I completely understand why the Manhattan buses are always in tip-top shape, because all the tourists go to Manhattan and because Manhattan is, well, Manhattan.

 

But if you have buses from depots such as Gun Hill going through neighborhoods like Pelham Pkwy, Morris Park, and Parkchester, why is it that Gun Hill [reportedly] continues to lag in the maintenance department? And is it that you have buses being maintained so well in depots such as West Farms, many of whose bus routes go through the worst neighborhoods (and stay there from first stop to last stop!) in the Bronx and NYC? What exactly is MTA's rationale for allowing certain depots to lag so much in the maintenance department? This has puzzled me for years. My guess is that most depots in boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens cannot really get away with it since those boroughs have Manhattan-like areas and tourist attractions of their own (that are only accessible by bus) while the Bronx does not have too many "Manhattan-like" areas and few tourist attractions except for Yankee Stadium, and everybody just uses trains to get there. I do not know; I am just throwing stuff out here. If somebody could enlighten me I would appreciate it. Another thing I realized a while back about Brooklyn is that at least one line from every Brooklyn depot except Ulmer Park serves Downtown Brooklyn.

 

Also, what is BTE? Does it refer to buses that were in the bus test/evaluation program?

 

 

BTE is exactly that, and differences in maintenance quality are general due to depot budgets and/or general mentalities. Some depots maintainers really take pride in their work, but in others it's nothing like that, maintenance is considered a chore that is best when avoided. Manhattan generally does have buses in very good shape due to depot budgets and the fact that the fleet age is pretty young, but like anywhere, the oldest buses in the Manhattan fleet have their share of trouble. The Tuskegee 53-5400s I've been complaining about only made it about 12-13 years before being scrapped, which is not too much, especially considering plenty of the 1000s in the Bronx lived through at least as tough lives and made it. It really depends on the depot, headquarters will always have tiptop maintenance (Quill, ENY), and high budgets will always help, but that's about all you can control.

 

In terms of the MTA turning a blind eye to bad maintenance, it's hard to say they do that on purpose, more that there isn't really much direct administrative oversight over specific depots. It's sorta, as long the wheels don't fall off and customers don't complain, do nothing. It's rare that an intervention occurs but I remember there was some sort of DOT checkup at CP recently that led them to get their act together more, and when that type of thing happens everything gets changed up. It's hard to really say anything for certain though.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

You know, people have discussed this on several occasions for years. So this gives me an opportunity to ask a big question:

 

Considering the fact that bus maintainers and mechanics (at least in the bad depots) are not supervised very much, especially compared to bus operators (although this may be less true now than it used to be), why is it that the maintenance staff in certain depots does a better job maintaining the buses than the maintenance staff in others? I would think that they would all be doing the same level of maintenance on the buses in every depot since they all work for the same agency. My guess is that it comes down to how much money MTA spends on each depot, and they spend more money on certain depots so that they can have more supervision at those depots to make sure that the maintenance staff is doing its job. Going by this logic, I completely understand why the Manhattan buses are always in tip-top shape, because all the tourists go to Manhattan and because Manhattan is, well, Manhattan.

 

But if you have buses from depots such as Gun Hill going through neighborhoods like Pelham Pkwy, Morris Park, and Parkchester, why is it that Gun Hill [reportedly] continues to lag in the maintenance department? And is it that you have buses being maintained so well in depots such as West Farms, many of whose bus routes go through the worst neighborhoods (and stay there from first stop to last stop!) in the Bronx and NYC? What exactly is MTA's rationale for allowing certain depots to lag so much in the maintenance department? This has puzzled me for years. My guess is that most depots in boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens cannot really get away with it since those boroughs have Manhattan-like areas and tourist attractions of their own (that are only accessible by bus) while the Bronx does not have too many "Manhattan-like" areas and few tourist attractions except for Yankee Stadium, and everybody just uses trains to get there. I do not know; I am just throwing stuff out here. If somebody could enlighten me I would appreciate it. Another thing I realized a while back about Brooklyn is that at least one line from every Brooklyn depot except Ulmer Park serves Downtown Brooklyn.

 

Also, what is BTE? Does it refer to buses that were in the bus test/evaluation program?

 

I think Gun Hill is starting to step up. I've noticed the Bx12 +SBS buses are recently have been cleaner inside than I am used to them being. I don't make a big stink of maintenance at depots unless there are buses breaking down in service and not doing their job which is to move riders from point A to B.

[Blitz]

Maintenance of buses in certain depots has very little to do with the depots operating budget. It has a lot more to do with making pullout and the MTA's "mentality" when it comes to the DOB. They take more of a reactive approach as oppose to being proactive meaning they would rather fix a bus after it breaks instead of making sure it doesn't break in the first place. Depot maintenance personnel and facilities has a lot to do with it as well. I know for a fact that there are a couple guys here as well as at Quill and ENY that have been on the job since before anyone ever heard of an RTS.

[MHV9218]

Maintenance of buses in certain depots has very little to do with the depots operating budget. It has a lot more to do with making pullout and the MTA's "mentality" when it comes to the DOB. They take more of a reactive approach as oppose to being proactive meaning they would rather fix a bus after it breaks instead of making sure it doesn't break in the first place. Depot maintenance personnel and facilities has a lot to do with it as well. I know for a fact that there are a couple guys here as well as at Quill and ENY that have been on the job since before anyone ever heard of an RTS.

 

 

Well sure in Mahattan the depots are pretty well-funded, that sort of thing does make a difference in Queens and SI though, where you have over-capacity depots that are struggling to keep everything under control. The old members of the MTA fleet are always impressive to me though, especially the maintainers and B/Os, the ones who stuck with their jobs and didn't move up. I've got a friend of mine at 126th who started out at Ulmer Park driving fishbowls all day, and he's still operating RTSes today.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Well Yonkers seems to do okay with their express buses. They're pretty clean except for the occasional newspaper for the most part. I had one bus with a broken seat 3185 but considering that those buses are now a good 7 years old in some cases, they're in pretty damn good shape. Run smoothly for the most part too. Eastchester seems to do well also, as does Spring Creek. I can only vouch for their express buses though. The worst have to be TU & Castleton by a mile. Castleton basically does nothing... Buses are filthy, as are many of TU's buses.

[Threxx]

Brooklyn is good all-around, but I think Grand Avenue could do a better job with their RTS's.

[East New York]

I can only speak for what I know, but the best maintenance I see externally is Grand Avenue, the best internally would be East New York, and generally some of the best overall is at Quill. West Farms and 126th do extremely good jobs considering the conditions as well.

 

LGA and Tuskegee come to mind for worst maintenance.

 

Newflash, bub. The BTEs in all three boroughs are tagged up.....I was on an Xcelsior on the B1 today, the seats were all tagged up at the back....it ain't just Staten Island...

 

As for Maintenance....

 

Manhattan : Quill (hands down the best in the borough), well pretty much the rest of them, all the depots in the city are pretty good.

Queens : Everything except LaGuardia...even JFK turned themselves around...

Brooklyn : They are all pretty good, Grand Ave & ENY takes the cake though.

Staten Island : Everything but Yukon.....

The Bronx : Eh, it depends on what you look at, really....the artics in all the regular depots are beat down to all hell, but the 40fters are in pretty good shape even at West Farms.....I think Eastchester & Gun Hill gets it done better than the others.

 

 

I would have to agree 100% with both of these!

 

Quill, ENY, Grand, Gleason, and Eastchester top the list.

 

Qilll is excellent all around.

ENY is excellent under the hood.

Grand has the best looking buses in NYC.

 

126 does pretty good under the hood too, along with Gleason.

 

Seems LGA can only maintain RTS'.

[unclephil]

There is a lot to take into account when determining the performance of the maintenace dept of any depot. Is every shift supervised by competent foremen and superintendants? Are the parts needed to repair these buses on hand? Most importantly can the bus even stay in the depot to be repaired rather than be pushed out to "make service"?

[Blitz]

I would have to agree 100% with both of these!

 

Quill, ENY, Grand, Gleason, and Eastchester top the list.

 

Qilll is excellent all around.

ENY is excellent under the hood.

Grand has the best looking buses in NYC.

 

126 does pretty good under the hood too, along with Gleason.

 

Seems LGA can only maintain RTS'.

 

There is a lot to take into account when determining the performance of the maintenace dept of any depot. Is every shift supervised by competent foremen and superintendants? Are the parts needed to repair these buses on hand? Most importantly can the bus even stay in the depot to be repaired rather than be pushed out to "make service"?

 

 

Quill has about 20 Koni lift stations that fit all buses, plenty of space outside of that occupied by the lifts, and plenty of personnel to service the buses. ENY and Gleason are both in the same boat as Quill. Grand Ave is right underneath a state of the art base shop so they get whatever they need. All these facilities are 2 or 3 times larger than 126th. We do the best with what we have (7 lifts to accomadate artics, 2 lifts that fit only standard 40 footers, and 4 inspection pits that fit only 40 footers). It goes to show you what can be done when people take pride in their jobs. Especially since like i said before, we have some dinosaurs working here. They were telling me of how here, at 126th, they use to rebuild engines and perform HSO for a lot of MaBSTOA buses when there were no lifts at all.

 

And parts being on property is not really a problem unless there is nothing in the system and we have to wait on the manufacturer. Its very common for most depots to have to get parts form other depots. Tuskegee, MHV, and KB all have storerooms twitch the size of ours, but i never go a day where i don't see at least one of their parts trucks