MHV9218

1 hour ago, The TransitMan said:

Maybe half of the 8 was peeled off while in the washer and thus you saw the [/b]3[/b]. Could happen.

True, although more often than not they just screw it up. I can't remember it exactly now, but before retirement 6701 or 6710 was labeled as the other bus on top, I think 6730 was screwed up too, and for years they ran out of 7s so buses like 6788 and 6746 ran as 6 88 and 6 46. I think they're much less careful with the aerial numbers than the rest of the bus.

42 minutes ago, QM1to6Ave said:

I really hope DSNY is on top of sanding/salting all the roads today. I saw some salt spreaders out earlier, but the potential for black ice tonight is immense, and giving me flashbacks to Halloween 2018 (I think) when we had a huge ice storm and the whole city gridlocked because there was no salt on the roads.

Problem is salt isn't effective below about 25º, so most of the big freeze won't be impacted. They really need to brine more than salt. We might get lucky if this rain wraps up early enough in the day. I wouldn't wanna drive tomorrow morning though, I'll say that. 

I'm dreading the salt for my car, which is gonna get covered in the stuff, but so be it. 

Stengel had the colors changed a few years ago too, that was also an update.

This seems like an easy one for me. Quill has been best in the city ever since the new West Side building opened around twenty years ago. ENY probably second best in terms of mechanical shape, cosmetically not always quite as much (some of the customers don't help).

4 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

As if the driver having a gun pulled on him and having to jump out of a window of a moving bus isn't forever traumatizing? lol Not saying that playing vigilante is the answer, but arguing that this incident had "a net zero effect on society" is disingenuous. I get where he's coming from in that some people may want to start taking the law into their own hands.  When you don't have law & order, this is what you get... Chaos... I'd be willing to put money on it that this guy has been released over and over again.  

It is a "net zero." Nobody got seriously hurt, the passengers are fine, and the guy will go rot in jail for a while. The death-by-auto alternative proposed here accomplishes not much.

17 hours ago, YankeesPwnMets said:

It’s easy to play armchair QB, but society would’ve been better off had the driver ran him over and claimed self defense

This incident had a net zero effect on society. Your alternative kills a guy, traumatizes the bus op forever, and suggests we embrace vigilante justice. Why is that better?  

54 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

So in other words, you conveniently omitted the fact that crime is worse this year compared to last year, knowing that we've been essentially going in and out of a pandemic with much lower ridership, even last year? lol Also, I was taking the subway in the 90s. It was actually fairly safe then. It's the 70s and the 80s that were really bad when the City was suffering financially. 

That said, you really can't compare those times anyway because as @Trainmaster5 noted, we have an explosion of EDPs, so safety concerns are totally different now. It used to be that if you kept your personal belongings safe, you were fine generally speaking, but that isn't a given now with so many people being attacked unprovoked. Anyway you slice it, the current administration (City & State) is FAILING to keep NYC safe. The guy involved in the latest platform shoving had over 30 arrests. A career criminal and a mentally disturbed individual who should've never been released, but here we are.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/survivor-shoved-onto-tracks-reacts-to-nyc-safety-plan-cops-make-arrest/3920589/

The quote I responded to, if you read any of these posts besides making up a conversation, was that crime was worse "than ever." Nobody brought up this year against last year. And by the way, the crime rate is actually far lower than the 1990s, as surprising as that might seem. I don't disagree with you about the presence of EDPs or the problem at hand.

7 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

I should have specified that I was focusing on accidents in particular. The criminal element is something else altogether. One thing my generation was TAUGHT was that you kept your back against a wall or a column.  Now with the explosion of EDPs throughout the city one must be extra vigilant wherever you are.  Just trying to clarify my point.  Carry on. 

 

Agreed. That much is definitely back – it chills me how often I hear from people of all ages now that they stand with backs against the wall when a train approaches. For my part, I definitely look over my shoulders. Not something I did as much a few years ago.

50 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

You are looking at this based on stats and even there you are wrong.

What exactly is the point of this statement? I offered you crime stats from a period in the 1980s and 1990s, and crime stats from the present day. I didn't compare last year to this year, or two years ago to this year. What was "wrong" about anything I said? You can disagree with things I've said, not things I haven't said.

27 minutes ago, Trainmaster5 said:

That someone either exaggerated or flat out lied. There’s more criminal activity on the system now resulting in injuries or death than ever. I’m not even including the suicidal ones that usually happen over the holidays between Thanksgiving and New Years. My experience with the system over 60 years as a rider of the system even before the Redbirds came on the scene. The difference is that the NTT usually prevents the T/O and the C/R from getting the indication to proceed. When those cars arrived on the  line the school kids would use their feet to delay a train at St. Lawrence for 3-5 minutes daily around 3 pm. Even with the older SMEE cars dragging was a rare occurrence. Like I said “ my experience and recollection “. Carry on.

You're definitely right that it's gotten out of hand down there, and it's really going to reduce ridership until the NYPD and TA can get things cleaned up underground. But I don't know if I would agree that it's worse "than ever." There were more than 15,000 transit felonies in 1981, about 14,000 in 1990. 2022 had 1,500 transit felonies as of October, meaning we can probably expect around 2,000 over the year. Unless there was a major shift in how certain felonies are classified that I'm not aware of – which is possible, I'm not a crime expert – I think we can safely say it's a lot safer than it used to be. 

Good memory!

Not my photo - comes from WorthPoint's archive:

https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0321/06/vintage-nyc-subway-lawrence-sign_1_49bf387a3b0ba67e2c422a1a9d354873.jpg

These come up for sale every 6-12 months, I'd say. Usually $300 and up depending on condition.

8 hours ago, Calvin said:

The unused charging port for the Proterra's currently at this state. Looks smashed into. 

What the hell could have hit that?

On 9/21/2022 at 10:16 AM, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I laughed when I read about this yesterday. Cameras don't deter criminals, which is why you won't see people rushing back to take the subway. The guy that shot up that  train... I'm sure he wasn't concerned about cameras... Not to mention how many of them don't work. This is just putting lipstick on a pig. That $6 million would be better invested having more cops ride on the actual trains and not just standing around on the platform.

Kind of a straw man, the guy who shot up the N train wasn't concerned about cameras because...there were no cameras. And then when they caught him after, it was from cameras on the street. Hard to see how that isn't a useful tool. And $6 million pays for like, four hours worth of NYPD. Would require a way more substantial investment.

Lot of Aesys-sign XD40s getting their fonts adjusted. Not all of them have the angular "NOT IN SERVICE" reading anymore, that's been re-coded to have the same rounded letters as a lot of the standard Luminator/Hanover buses.

I've been seeing Quill buses on the Flatbush Extension getting on the Manhattan Bridge around 5-7pm for the past couple days. What are those buses doing out there?

The MTA only getting 12-13 years out of those NGs (depending on build date in 2009) really is an indictment on those buses and those batteries. I can't think of a 40-foot order that aged that badly for the TA in ages.

16 minutes ago, 1train2255railfan said:

500k is not necessarily the mark for retirement. With the RTSs running for 20-22 years, they definitely accumulated way more mileage than that. Plus, there were some OGs, namely 2004-05 ones in Brooklyn, that hit over 600k around four-five years before retirement. 

Yeah, I'm fairly certain some of the 1996s overhauled in the "Program" in 2016 or 2016 made it to 700k or higher. 500k is standard for a bus of 12+ years.

What people might be confusing is the MINIMUM life, not MAXIMUM life. The FTA regulates that federally-funded buses need to run for 12 years OR 500k miles. If a transit agency retires a bus before that point, and it's federally-funded, the FTA can say the agency is delinquent and refuse to give them as much money in the future. So you'll never see the MTA retiring buses before 12 years or 500k miles, unless it's a demo/niche fleet purchased without federal money. After those thresholds are met, then the agency can start retiring the fleet. 

The MTA will run a bus for 700k, 800k miles if they think it's still valuable in terms of replacement cost. That's what happened with the RTS fleet. The OG hybrids or some of the D60s, not so much. 

On 8/10/2022 at 1:29 PM, Future ENY OP said:

Units are loaned.  

Seems like 5878 as well. Wonder why Quill needs the buses. 

Generally speaking els were considered loud, ugly, and inconvenient. They make the streets below them dark and they depress real estate value in the immediate area due to their noise. Underground lines don't have any of these issues. Els were demolished in denser, wealthier areas with more political power and kept in neighborhoods that were poorer and had less political say. The same has largely been true the world over with the exception of the Chicago Loop, as well as some neighborhoods in NYC which became prosperous only decades after el demolition had stopped (like Long Island City).

You guys see the mess in Connecticut? Every XE40 pulled from service after spontaneous combustion at a depot. Doesn't bode amazingly for the fleet.

Crazy the roof is already breaking apart, that's not an old building by any standard. Contractor should have some questions to answer.

Saw a NG with the Luminator muticolor sign running the M20 today. Anybody identify the bus? Assume it came from MV.

Some of the LFS HEVs are getting the same tiny text error on the front destinations that the LFSAs had for a while a year or two back. Looks goofy again.

6218 was running out of TU today with Hale stickers still on (and the wrap ofc). Is that a loan or sticking?

15 minutes ago, Bill from Maspeth said:

Don't blame it on the old people.  It's everybody.  Transit can do all the outreach in the world.  They can put posters on the buses in every language including Pig Latin.  They can have ambassadors riding every bus giving out a brochure to every entering passenger (who enters thru the front door) and they still won't get it because they all feel it doesn't apply to them.  So don't blame the old people with their flip phones.  There is plenty of "blame" to go around.  I'm 69 and I do not have a flip phone.  And I'm old going on ancient.

Hey, I don't blame the old people with flip phones, I blame Transit for not planning a way to reach the old people with flip phones. It was the same story when they took down posted timetables at bus stops and replaced it with a QR code to scan, which in my eyes was just a terrible idea and took away a ton of useful information from riders. Sometimes your phone dies, sometimes you don't have one, etc. But you're right, there's also a wall they hit here, which is people just ignoring the notices until it happens.

Some of those XD40s from the second batch still really move. Was on 7363 today, absolutely flying and crazy sounds to it as well. Really hung in the lower gears which was nice for acceleration. Reminded me of an LACMTA Xcelsior a bit.