MHV9218

Still some SI LFSes running out of Quill, and no HEVs back for Manhattanville. It continues.

Oh, that is too damn cool. Whoever is responsible for some of these perfect paint jobs (5227, 9207), I'm damn impressed too. Reminds you what our CMFs can, should, and do not do.

Read that we lost Justin this week. Some of you may remember his presence in/around the forums and the great rides he used to give around the city. I had the pleasure of rolling with him back when KB had the O5s and let me tell you, that was like nothing else. Absolutely whipping and during the layover he had me laughing till I had tears in my eyes. He might have looked like a tough dude but he was a funny, generous guy who could throw a bus around like nobody else. RIP.

Your point taken, that yes, it's inaccurate to act like the depot got built there out of spite after a major community was established. But, to be fair, it's not like everybody moving up to Harlem in the 1940s/50s did that entirely by choice. It was an extremely low-cost neighborhood for poor people (most of them black) to move, so many went. I'm sure plenty of people would have preferred to live on the Upper East Side, but whatwith the sheer property value and redlining, that wasn't really an option. And if you do look at some of the depots in more residential, wealthier neighborhoods (Hudson Depot or 54th Street Depot, for example), the TA has since shuttered/repurposed those garages and moved the vehicles out. It's not a total coincidence that the remaining bus depots in Manhattan are in neighborhoods with less political say and sway (exception Quill, which is in tunnel no man's land). I agree that it was complete BS when Clayton Guse tried this argument about RTSes at ENY (as if the M66/72 were running through impoverished neighborhoods), and you're right that the line gets thrown around in some silly ways, but in this case it's not completely out of left field.

Damn, I just saw that bus a couple days ago.

Yeah, weekly mandatory testing for the unvaccinated existing employees and no new employees without the vaccine.

Oh word, I forgot about that, I forget that goes back fifteen years or so. I'm trying to remember, I guess during snow loans it was all hybrids for MV, and they sent the diesels to MJQ. Last diesels were probably the RTSes you mention (what was that...2018? 2019?) and the QV LFSes that showed up on a weekday tripper a couple times even earlier.

It's funny, I wonder if they had to send exclusively NGs since the B/Os weren't trained on much else. You'd think an LFS would work as well as an LFS HEV, but...

Somehow you never saw the B51 dollar van, now that would've been a sight outside City Hall lmao... Driy-vah! Driy-vah!

The 5th Avenue lanes (both of them) really do feel like a waste with cars still turning, and so often turning from the second-to-right lane instead of the far right one. Not to mention Ubers and parked cars breaking the rules. As a result you see tons of ops still cruising in the middle lanes, with the righthand lanes empty and traffic backed up as a result. I used to commute on the 5th Ave. bus, so I'm all in favor of bus lanes, but they did it in a really stupid way. I'm not even sure if it's really worth the damage it's done to traffic flow on 5th, especially since so much of the day the lanes are basically empty.

It's funny, they finally learned their lesson and got themselves LWB Crown Vics, and they use them, but now all the Crown Vics are getting retired! The 6th has a Crown Vic taxi and a Crown Vic fake car service I see around all the time, and it was great cover until it became the only Crown Vic in town.

I gotta stop missing these board meetings...

Was noticing that 9504 (I think that was it) still has the as-delivered branding with the MTA logo and no NYCB. Almost every Xcelsior has been modified by this point to read NYCB or MTAB.

That's *really* recent for those buses. I'd look for something like August 20th or at least a few weeks before drawing conclusions.

6th Ave really went to shit this afternoon. I waited for 20 minutes for a (B), gave up, got the (F), immediately went BIE and T/O spent 30 min walking the train before giving up. I don't even want to imagine how clogged up it got behind if both the express and local were running that badly.

Lol nah knew your point, just picturing a real tough and noisy clearance testing session...

Gonna be a real bitch testing them on the A Division!

Good for them. And they should be charging more for their insurance too. No reason to cost the rest of us money for their own ignorance.

Those Designlines were fun as hell. I still remember catching one on University on the M3 (that'll never happen again) with an op who gave it the business. The pre-tracker finds were a treat to see... Alright, time to stop spamming this thread...

Hey, that was the fun of it! These new fanners have no idea what it was like lol. Why do you think there used to be so many photos from Borough Hall and Main St. and Parsons/Archer? You went where you had a mathematically decent change of catching something interesting. Parsons used to be a shrine to the DD50.

Vaguely remember that now actually. In the pantheon of short-lived MJQ loans like 8795 (original) from QV...

Huh, totally forgot about that. I still remember when Quill had 4897-4898 for a minute as well. I guess it's just the 7000s that never made an appearance there.

They did?

Great shot. *Wrapped* though! These buses are light blue SBS paint from the factory. The local scheme is a vinyl wrap. And no, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

Notable that unlike Sandy, which was salt water (= frame rot, the reason the SI Orion Vs were retired so fast), this was mostly fresh water (and sewage). The question is really electronic issues, but it's not as cut-and-dry as a storm surge case.