Q64 To Forest Hills

If you are talking about the same guy I know about, he is like that on all the lines he does. He bounces between the Qm4 and Q64 and is constantly late wherever he is, and is frankly afraid to drive the bus. He didn't break 22mph on the Queensboro Bridge with open road. I had him one time later in the day on a weekend, no traffic on 6th, and when we pull up to 57th and 3rd we sit for a few minutes to hold schedule, we ended up leaving a minute or two late. It took me 1 hour 2 minutes from 34th/6th to Jewel around the Van Wyck, no traffic, the whole trip is supposed to take 57 minutes. He also knows I don't really enjoy his driving and greeted me with "look who we have here" and "what a pleasant surprise" needless to say, he wasn't the happiest camper to see me, but he still told me to enjoy my night, twice, while exiting.

Did you happen to note the Run of that trip?

That’s true, but I actually did get a hybrid when they were running, it was humorous to me, but not to the woman yelling that the Qm4 needs to go back to Cp. Baisley’s local fleet is usually decent in terms of cleanliness, I usually don’t pay attention to how clean the expresses are though. I can say that those pics are definitely unacceptable.

Baisley seems to have done it again. I'm currently on the 10:50 Qm4 bus 2858 (around 13-15 passengers just incase anyone has been tracking the ridership along the Qm4), to Eletchester, and well its a dud. As some of you may know its finals week (good luck to those who have finals coming up), so I decided to take the express bus home to type up some final papers and whatnot. The bus shows up 10 minutes late, which was excusable on my part because of traffic, but the bus has no Wifi or USBs that work. I'm just lucky that I have a portable charger and a hotspot on my phone. Can't wait until the new express buses come in as its annoying that you would think you would get a bus that you could at least charge your phone on. Although it's trivial it shows how much the MTA really cares about express buses. However on a side note, the only thing keeping me from being super pissed off is that this bus sounds really good, but I feel bad for the rest of the passengers who don't get their foam on from how good a bus sounds.

In the case of Baisley, apparently they have one bus out for a rebuild, but 2-3 of their hand me down 2800 MCIs crapped out at the same time. They had no choice but to put the hybrid out, and to lessen the blow whether it was the QM4/44 or the QM21 they didn’t collect fare. They finally have two of the hand me downs back up and running but one of them is still out. They just sent another 2800 from eastchester to fill in for that bus so they’re only down one now so hybrids haven’t been popping up anymore. But riders had a fair point, they called Baisley the step child depot and its true. Although I like the 2800s, it’s hard on the depot maintence wise. It’s also the traffic problem on 6th and 57th. Bus lanes are basically non-existent causing buses to get back to the depot late which reduces the options of handoffs between operators, or simply trying to get from 57th/3rd down to 36th/6th for a trip back. My guy got to 164th around 30 minutes late. He had 35 minutes to get from 164th to 38th/3rd for the Qm44 and he got there 10 minutes late. It’s also the matter of an ambitious schedule on the drivers. He drove straight from 164th all the way to the city, picked up and drove straight back to Queens. He had the bus running 4 hours straight, which I’m not sure if it could be a problem, but I don’t know how these buses are speced and how that can effect them. But there are a bunch of little things that end up screwing over the lines.

This is a Clever Devices screen setup. They don’t say service alerts or list upcoming stops like the c40s. Transfers are announced with the “next stop” announcement when leaving the stop. The when pulling into a stop it’s programmed differently. Say you are pulling into Jewel Avenue, as soon as the doors are triggered to open “Main Street and Jewel Avenue *1-2 second pause* transfer available to Q64 Qm4 and QM44” will play. If you were to pass Jewel Avenue without triggering the doors, no announcement will notify you that you are at the stop. After passing the stop there is a bit of lag but it refreshes and says the next stop. Interesting feature is it shows estimated time to the next stop. I haven’t taken the bus enough to see if the times between stops adjust due to the time of day, based on real time traffic or bustime data, however the times don’t seem that far off.

This was a few weeks ago. Not yesterday. I got 3782 on the q64 Yup, Baisley was short on MCIs one morning. Their orange signed ones aren’t doing good either. The greens are supposed to be straight up reserve buses, but they are always running because the oranges are in the shop. Around a week after another hybrid, I believe 3686 also ran on the QM4. My guy at Baisley said it most likely broke down because of the govern on it

6543 is on loan to Baisley again Intersting thing is these loans go back and forth. Last week 6545 was on a Baisley route. The next morning it was apparently on the Q37, and then later that day it was on the Q64 Side note is last night I got 3782, the hybrid that broke down in the Queens-Midtown tunnel on the QM4, that bus sounded terrible. It was making a noise similar to a fan belt screech. The hybrids have not been doing that well, and it doesn’t help that they’re being run constantly. They’re having the problem that west farms had where their buses keep breaking down and they can’t catch up in maintence.

Seen 6476 in eastchester last night. Missing the right side lower panel, sitting next to RTSes and O7 CNGs that were reported scrap

4021 now has bike racks installed

1209 repainted

3992 and 4106 are at WF

They are starting to do this already. A week or two ago I seen eagle team posted at the doors of a Q44 riding along, checking people as they come on. There were only people at the first two doors however. Still a good concept and they should do it more often

6023 out of Casey, 7348 out of Flatbush and 6098 all have the same vision zero ads as 5411. They’re simply starting to put ads on new scheme and sbs wrapped buses.

The sign update is for the Luminator Spectrums. The update has been giving them a font and color similar to the Hanover’s. They’ve been spotted on XD40s, some Luminator LFSAs and one of the S79s Next Gens which also have the Luminators.