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The 7 Private Lines


Bracamonte

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The Classics would have stayed around a lot longer than they did. Same goes for the Fishbowls out of NYBS. Come to think of it, they would probably be running right now if the takeover never happened. Makes me sad thinking about it. :(

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The Q35 improved with consistant arrival times since being a limited only line. I miss those O5s though.

But if there was no takeover, then those older NYCT RTSs might be gone sooner than to have been displaced to MTA Bus. Sure for NYCT they 8000-8300s were terrible, but they were slightly better than the GL and TBC RTSs.

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If the (MTA) hadn't taken over those seven private companies you would still be riding 30 year old equipment for starters because Bloomberg and the (MTA) had no intentions of ordering new buses if the bus companies had stayed private. In addition the service would have stayed inconsistent and unreliable. As a resident of Queens I am happy the (MTA) has taken over those private companies which were run into the ground and neglected. They served as cash cows for the owners who bled the (MTA) and riders and didnt invest anything back to maintaining a new fleet of buses or good service.

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so true,would of had NEBI or the new flyer .

 

Thats incorrect the private lines were subsudized by the (MTA) and any new purchases of new buses would have to go through the (MTA). The private lines could not purchase buses on their own. The (MTA) has to purchase the buses for them.

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If you ask me, the worst private bus company out of all those the MTA had to take over was Triboro Coach/LaGuardia Depot. To this day the buses they have now (even new fleet) look like garbage. They even had to take away their CNG facility, although Command/Spring Creek and Queens Surface/College Point kept theirs, however.

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I think you are exhagerating the 30years thing. Were any buses even over 20 years old? The MCI Classics and Fishbowls at NYBS and LL were still pretty good. It was the Cooper 4 [more GL and TBC] that were the worst.

 

In terms of best to worst it was: NYBS,LL,QSC, Command/JBL, GL/TBC.

 

Exactly. Not all the private depots were bad. New York Bus Service had some fine-looking Fishbowls, if you ask me.

 

My ranking: NYBS/Liberty Lines > Queens Surface > Command > Green Lines (their Orion 5s looked OK for the most part) > Jamaica > Triboro.

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In my opinion it was the Green Bus Lines the fleet was old and in many of the Buses the seats were falling out. Also the in many of the buses the sides were wide open and the buses were just falling apart to the point they started using 1980 TMC from sister line Jamaica Bus Lines.

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In my opinion it was the Green Bus Lines the fleet was old and in many of the Buses the seats were falling out. Also the in many of the buses the sides were wide open and the buses were just falling apart to the point they started using 1980 TMC from sister line Jamaica Bus Lines.

 

Yeah their RTS' looked like garbage for the most part.

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I have to disagree about GL > JBL. I think JBL was much better overall. What really went in its favor was that it was much smaller than GL. So the fleet got better care.

 

Hmmm...you're right about that. Compared to JFK today, I'd say Baisley Park is in the money.

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Wow where would we be? The Green Lines RTS would still be around with garbage bags as windows (possibly). The Q53 would still run every 30 minutes, the Q60 would run one bus an hour. Queens Surface would still have buses with brakes failing. I get this whole thing where the City choked money from these lines, but not really, for years the Cooper family was taking the money for it's own, which eventually was shared with John Liu. Queens Surface sucked from as far as I remember and that's from the 80s, so I'm glad they don't exist anymore.

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If you ask me, the worst private bus company out of all those the MTA had to take over was Triboro Coach/LaGuardia Depot. To this day the buses they have now (even new fleet) look like garbage. They even had to take away their CNG facility, although Command/Spring Creek and Queens Surface/College Point kept theirs, however.
They didnt take away triboro`s CNG facility,it blew up in an accident some years ago.
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Queens Surface was a wreck. I was a rider on their lines for a lot of years and they never showed up. I was talking to a buddy of mine and he was telling me one time he worked the Q25, there were only 4 buses on the entire line. The Q65 was just as bad, I actually wallked home from Horace Harding & 164th to hillside because the bus never showed up. Maybe their buses didn't have funky looking panels and such but the buses never ran.

 

I remember I took a few Green Line routes before the takeover and they ran much more frequent than Queens Surface. Jamaica had a really good looking buses but I didn't ride them as much. I took Triboro a few times in the early 2000s and every time I got an Orion V CNG.

 

JFK is fine, they suck cosmetically but their buses are just as good if not better than Baisleys, I'm comparing the Orion 7 OGs and the Orion Vs. Samething with LGA, their buses are good, but they need to wash the back of the buses. I saw 9319 yesterday and it looked great, until I saw all the dust on the back of the bus, looked like it hadn't been cleaned back there.

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