BUS - Random Thoughts Thread

[Lawrence St]

Just saw a Q101 almost hit a bike because the bike went right through a red light in the intersection.

I feel bad for the B/O, he looked pretty shaken up because it could've been much worse. 

When will our city officials do something about this issue???

[NewFlyer 230]

Is the MTA getting rid of the “Fare Required” & “Mask Required” signs on the buses now? I noticed today that 8465, 189, 190 and 5991 don’t have them. I know 5991 had them before, because I rode it several times on the Q44 during the entirety of this pandemic. I also do know that not all buses received the updated signs but I only recall seeing a few XD40s out of JA and a few MTA bus Orion VII’s without them. 

10 hours ago, SoSpectacular said:

That can actually be easily fixed... In fact it's even part of the pre-trip to open one of the windows and let it slam back into place to confirm that they are "functioning". That red latch is simple.

Thanks for providing some clarity. I always thought the windows were broken if they kept opening like that. I haven’t seen it in a long time but I remember back when the Orion V’s were around I would occasionally see a window fly open on a turn. 

8 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

Just saw a Q101 almost hit a bike because the bike went right through a red light in the intersection.

I feel bad for the B/O, he looked pretty shaken up because it could've been much worse. 

When will our city officials do something about this issue???

We were just discussing this not too long ago on one of these threads. These delivery guys and bikers are out of control. Many of them don’t follow the rules on the road and they are a danger to themselves and others. Almost got hit myself a few weeks ago by one of these guys that literally didn’t want to stop at the stop sign. To answer your question I personally don’t think the city gives a damn tbh. They have been so fixated on painting bike lanes everywhere, that I think enforcing these guys are very low on their list of priorities. 

[MHV9218]

Bikers, who lead to a fatality maybe once every six years, can be our focus with after we tackle car fatalities, which lead to a dozen dead bikers, 130 dead pedestrians, and 50 or so dead drivers each year. Proportionality – don't miss the forest for the trees.

[Lawrence St]

2 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Bikers, who lead to a fatality maybe once every six years, can be our focus with after we tackle car fatalities, which lead to a dozen dead bikers, 130 dead pedestrians, and 50 or so dead drivers each year. Proportionality – don't miss the forest for the trees.

While I agree with you that there is a serious reckless driver problem in NYC, there is also an increase in reckless bikes. I can't count how many times I've seen a bike almost cause an accident or crash into a pedestrian.

[MHV9218]

Just now, Lawrence St said:

While I agree with you that there is a serious reckless driver problem in NYC, there is also an increase in reckless bikes. I can't count how many times I've seen a bike almost cause an accident or crash into a pedestrian.

Which is bad! For sure. But police resources are limited. If a biker hits a pedestrian, it's rarely if ever a fatal collision – there is one every few years. If a car hits a pedestrian, it's often death. I'd much rather see the NYPD focused on the perps most likely to cause death or serious injury.

One of the easiest fixes is something Albany needs to allow: more red-light cameras around the city. As a driver, I don't understand why anybody is against these...I can understand being annoyed about speed cameras, but running a red light is not a victimless crime, and it puts other drivers and pedestrians/bikers in danger too.

[B35 via Church]

7 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Wasn't there some dude who got mad a bus passed him up, *ran* to catch up to it, and then pulled a gun on the driver? Or some type of crazy ass shit like that.

3 hours ago, QM1to6Ave said:

I remember that story! Gotta try and find the article

You mean, Flash here that claimed to have ran 23 whole blocks to catch a bus !

5 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Which is bad! For sure. But police resources are limited. If a biker hits a pedestrian, it's rarely if ever a fatal collision – there is one every few years. If a car hits a pedestrian, it's often death. I'd much rather see the NYPD focused on the perps most likely to cause death or serious injury.

One of the easiest fixes is something Albany needs to allow: more red-light cameras around the city. As a driver, I don't understand why anybody is against these...I can understand being annoyed about speed cameras, but running a red light is not a victimless crime, and it puts other drivers and pedestrians/bikers in danger too.

Reasons ranging from the good old fashioned invasion of privacy bit, to receiving "false positives"....

Edited January 5, 2021 by B35 via Church

[Lawrence St]

12 minutes ago, NewFlyer 230 said:

. We were just discussing this not too long ago on one of these threads. These delivery guys and bikers are out of control. Many of them don’t follow the rules on the road and they are a danger to themselves and others. Almost got hit myself a few weeks ago by one of these guys that literally didn’t want to stop at the stop sign. To answer your question I personally don’t think the city gives a damn tbh. They have been so fixated on painting bike lanes everywhere, that I think enforcing these guys are very low on their list of priorities. 

Because of politics. Almost every politician is a big "bike" person and don't like car culture.

Me, personally, I like taking transit more then I do driving in the city because of the fact that Manhattan is ridiculously overwhelmed with reckless drivers (especially taxis) and bikes. 

B/O's who work on any of the Manhattan routes dont get enough credit for the amount of nonsense they have to put up with.

[Lawrence St]

9 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Which is bad! For sure. But police resources are limited. If a biker hits a pedestrian, it's rarely if ever a fatal collision – there is one every few years. If a car hits a pedestrian, it's often death. I'd much rather see the NYPD focused on the perps most likely to cause death or serious injury.

One of the easiest fixes is something Albany needs to allow: more red-light cameras around the city. As a driver, I don't understand why anybody is against these...I can understand being annoyed about speed cameras, but running a red light is not a victimless crime, and it puts other drivers and pedestrians/bikers in danger too.

Same reason why cashless tolling is disliked, the state makes $$$$ off fees for drivers that don't pay (because they never receive the notices in the first place). Red light cameras at times rarely work right at all and ticket you even when you've done nothing wrong.

[MHV9218]

I tried to find data on this, and from a cursory search, seems like the closest thing is a case study in Chicago where 90% of tickets were substantiated in court. In the ones that weren't, it was mainly for right on red where the vehicles stopped and then turned, which doesn't apply in NYC obviously. Chicago's DOT says a review of 300 controversial catches were all accurate. Does anybody have real numbers about how effective or ineffective they are? I've only ever seen them work accurately in my driving and walking experience. 

[danielhg121]

24 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

I tried to find data on this, and from a cursory search, seems like the closest thing is a case study in Chicago where 90% of tickets were substantiated in court. In the ones that weren't, it was mainly for right on red where the vehicles stopped and then turned, which doesn't apply in NYC obviously. Chicago's DOT says a review of 300 controversial catches were all accurate. Does anybody have real numbers about how effective or ineffective they are? I've only ever seen them work accurately in my driving and walking experience. 

All of the red light cameras are reviewed independently by an actual traffic agent sitting at a desk. Therefore, I would assume the chances of you getting ticketed for no reason are pretty low as those traffic agents would probably be scrutinized if they wrongfully issued you a ticket having signed off on it. They also print a code on the ticket that comes in the mail and you can review video footage of the infraction. 

Speeding tickets from cameras work the same way.

Edited January 5, 2021 by danielhg121

[Lex]

1 hour ago, Lawrence St said:

Same reason why cashless tolling is disliked, the state makes $$$$ off fees for drivers that don't pay (because they never receive the notices in the first place). Red light cameras at times rarely work right at all and ticket you even when you've done nothing wrong.

Where are you getting your information from?

[trainfan22]

I JUST missed an OG hybrid on the B103, there's serveral on the line now. Hope these Orions at SC is permanent, love  the C40s but diversity is always nice.

[Deucey]

6 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

One of the easiest fixes is something Albany needs to allow: more red-light cameras around the city. As a driver, I don't understand why anybody is against these...I can understand being annoyed about speed cameras, but running a red light is not a victimless crime, and it puts other drivers and pedestrians/bikers in danger too.

The rear end collision increase

Municipalities shortening the yellow light duration to boost red light ticket revenue

Losing contestations against them because there wasn't enough time to stop because the yellow light duration was reduced

Turning intersections all red before the next green light does the same thing as a camera for less money

But I'm speaking as one who grew up driving in California where we didn't have traffic lights at every intersection and had sensors in the road to turn them green if we were waiting for a minute at a red.

[B35 via Church]

10 hours ago, NewFlyer 230 said:

Is the MTA getting rid of the “Fare Required” & “Mask Required” signs on the buses now? I noticed today that 8465, 189, 190 and 5991 don’t have them. I know 5991 had them before, because I rode it several times on the Q44 during the entirety of this pandemic. I also do know that not all buses received the updated signs but I only recall seeing a few XD40s out of JA and a few MTA bus Orion VII’s without them....

Although the majority of buses I've seen still has it displayed, I'm also noticing an increasing amount of buses (regardless of borough) removing those two messages from the destination signage....

[Deucey]

28 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

Although the majority of buses I've seen still has it displayed, I'm also noticing an increasing amount of buses (regardless of borough) removing those two messages from the destination signage....

Does make me wonder what the fare evasion rate is now...

If it's better than before, might be worth it to keep that message in the display.

[Bay Ridge Express]

It seems most of the people in this thread either drive or (of course) use public transportation, but does anyone actually bike? If so, then you'd know that biker culture, consisting of not stopping at red lights, is rampant. Some do it more carefully than others, treating the red light as a stop sign and looking both ways to see if they could actually keep going or not, but imo the only way that will stop is from enforcement. You can throw as many lights and cameras as you want, but w/o enforcing the rules, incidents and the skipping of red lights will keep happening. The other question is... by how much should these rules be enforced? I imagine that if police began ticketing every biker who skipped a red light even if it wasn't a danger to others on the road, the bikers would get pretty annoyed. Not saying that they should be skipping lights, but it wouldn't be that big of a problem if they would be a bit more careful about it. Also, this begs the question--should bikers have to go through the same training and license acquisition as car drivers so that they would learn how to actually follow the rules of the road? lol

11 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

Bikers, who lead to a fatality maybe once every six years, can be our focus with after we tackle car fatalities, which lead to a dozen dead bikers, 130 dead pedestrians, and 50 or so dead drivers each year. Proportionality – don't miss the forest for the trees.

OK, but of those dozen biker fatalities, how do you know that the problem was not caused by a lack of care from the bikers themselves?

[R10 2952]

On 1/3/2021 at 12:13 PM, GojiMet86 said:

One of these SBA/PBA dupes thought he and his family could park there because he had that membership card. We spent 5 minutes arguing about it, and he insisted he could park anywhere he wanted to, total bs.

So I've never had sympathy for these jackasses.

I stopped having sympathy for them many years ago.  When I was 12, some punk stole my bike from in front of a supermarket in Queens; store had camera footage of the act, but NYPD never even bothered- they closed the case after 3 days.  And then of course you hear these stories break about the ticket-fixing scandals, bribery, the above-the-law mentality, other BS and so on.

Maybe there are a few good cops (who knows), but too many of them act like just another street gang when it comes to who they choose to help.  If I had been somebody's cousin, the bike would've turned up instantly probably....

Edited January 6, 2021 by R10 2952

[SoSpectacular]

2 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Although the majority of buses I've seen still has it displayed, I'm also noticing an increasing amount of buses (regardless of borough) removing those two messages from the destination signage....

They're not removed, they're PR messages that have to be input separately from the destination sign. I stopped bothering with it because the destination signs take too long to cycle and getting constantly bombarded with the same questions about what route I am despite going in the direction posted on the bus stop get annoying...

[checkmatechamp13]

23 minutes ago, SoSpectacular said:

They're not removed, they're PR messages that have to be input separately from the destination sign. I stopped bothering with it because the destination signs take too long to cycle and getting constantly bombarded with the same questions about what route I am despite going in the direction posted on the bus stop get annoying...

I mean you could be a short-turn or some other route on the pole for all they know. 

[Deucey]

2 hours ago, Bay Ridge Express said:

If so, then you'd know that biker culture, consisting of not stopping at red lights, is rampant. Some do it more carefully than others, treating the red light as a stop sign and looking both ways to see if they could actually keep going or not, but imo the only way that will stop is from enforcement.

It's called an Idaho Stop or something like that.

But very few bike riders actually do it correctly, or for situations where pedestrians are in the intersection or crossing a right-of-way.

Of all the examples we can think of, the one that truly sticks out to me is this woman riding the wrong way on Met Av at Union Av in W'burg, got broadsided by a box truck that had the green light on Union, and she berated the driver before getting back on her bike and continuing.

That made me "anti-cyclist" over every other incident where I almost got run over by one because the entitlement of this woman is emblematic of much of the city bike lobby - that they don't have to follow rules of the road and they're never at fault in incidents.

That can never be codified into law or implemented into citation-writing.

[B35 via Church]

4 hours ago, Deucey said:

Does make me wonder what the fare evasion rate is now...

If it's better than before, might be worth it to keep that message in the display.

LOL! It is going to take way more than a message in a mere destination sign (that folks barely/rarely/ever read in the first place) to decrease the rate of farebeating in a culture where it's widely pervasive in... Although I will say, that ought to make the Eagle Team feel like shit, if a message in a destination sign can go ways to deter system-wide farebeating.

4 hours ago, Bay Ridge Express said:

It seems most of the people in this thread either drive or (of course) use public transportation, but does anyone actually bike? If so, then you'd know that biker culture, consisting of not stopping at red lights, is rampant. Some do it more carefully than others, treating the red light as a stop sign and looking both ways to see if they could actually keep going or not, but imo the only way that will stop is from enforcement. You can throw as many lights and cameras as you want, but w/o enforcing the rules, incidents and the skipping of red lights will keep happening. The other question is... by how much should these rules be enforced? I imagine that if police began ticketing every biker who skipped a red light even if it wasn't a danger to others on the road, the bikers would get pretty annoyed. Not saying that they should be skipping lights, but it wouldn't be that big of a problem if they would be a bit more careful about it. Also, this begs the question--should bikers have to go through the same training and license acquisition as car drivers so that they would learn how to actually follow the rules of the road? lol

The first sentence read as if you were about to staunchly defend biker culture... But yeah, a large part of the gripe people have with bikes/bikers is the lack of enforcement/responsibility placed on them.... Fact of the matter is that bikers in general want to have their cake & eat it too.... Have some of them tell it, they do no wrong & [pedestrians & motorists] are always in the wrong....

4 hours ago, R10 2952 said:

I stopped having sympathy for them many years ago.  When I was 12, some punk stole my bike from in front of a supermarket in Queens; store had camera footage of the act, but NYPD never even bothered- they closed the case after 3 days.  And then of course you hear these stories break about the ticket-fixing scandals, bribery, the above-the-law mentality, other BS and so on.

Maybe there are a few good cops (who knows), but too many of them act like just another street gang when it comes to who they choose to help.  If I had been somebody's cousin, the bike would've turned up instantly probably....

Hence, anarchists...

I'm not exactly pro-cop (blue lives matter or w/e the f***), but I just don't have it in me to have that much damn hate for cops either - and I'm someone that's been stopped & frisked 4 times.

3 hours ago, SoSpectacular said:

They're not removed, they're PR messages that have to be input separately from the destination sign. I stopped bothering with it because the destination signs take too long to cycle and getting constantly bombarded with the same questions about what route I am despite going in the direction posted on the bus stop get annoying...

Just to be clear, I did not mean "removed" in the sense that it's no longer possible to have them ever inputted or whatever....

If you're one of the b/o's that stopped bothering with it, then you're a first-hand example of what I was saying with that...

2 hours ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

I mean you could be a short-turn or some other route on the pole for all they know. 

 To be quite honest, I thought it (the displaying of the 2 msgs. in the signage) was window-dressing from jump.... Still do, as a matter of fact.

Edited January 6, 2021 by B35 via Church

[Orion Was Here]

On 1/4/2021 at 9:10 PM, Bay Ridge Express said:

Speak to us again once you report all of the buses on a weekday rush hour failing to arrive within one minute of their scheduled arrival time at each stop.

I never did that?

[Orion Was Here]

I respect the Fresh Pond Driver. Why do i get hate . I would have done the same, we are all humans

[Deucey]

I wish BusTime and the apps showed the coach number or the control ID number of the next bus scheduled - at least at terminals. False hope hurts feelings when it’s hot, cold, or you’re late.

[Mtatransit]

Q114 does really good along Rockaway Turnpike. Every single stop has a dozen on/offs

So I took the Q111 from Cedarhurst yesterday. Bus surprisingly had six ons. Five on Peninsula and one along Brookfield Rd. I really thought it would carry no one. That corridor seems like it deserves more than one trip in each direction, but its Nassau's jurisdiction so I guess its more likely that Q111 would be completely cut in that area. 

Kind of weird seeing an artic in that part of Nassau County