Turbo19 Posted September 10, 2013 Share #26 Posted September 10, 2013 Problem is Ocean and Monmouth have lagged behind other suburban areas with transit, such as Nassau & Westchester, even Suffolk Transit, which I used to complain about, until I saw how bad Ocean Crap is. Many areas down there have no bus service at all, take Stafford Township with all it's shopping centers, there's no bus service (well there may be one that runs once a week). LBI - No bus service, despite being a major summer destination. Fischer Blvd in Toms River with Shop-Rite, no bus service. No bus service along Rt.37 to Lakewood. No bus service in countless areas in Monmouth County. Freehold Raceway Mall not served by NJT except along Rt.9 with a dicey walk, otherwise you're stuck with the once in a blue moon 67 or the Veolia routes. Suffolk Transit looks pretty good compared to what is available down there. And it can take you to some pretty rural-like places. I'm just saying some suburbs do have better transportation than others. In Monmouth & Ocean buses are only for NYC commuters, not local travel, in most cases. The problem is this stagnates ridership & promotes driving (more traffic). Ocean-Ride doesn't even serve the College! Of course Route 9 is NJT's Bread & Butter down there, and is the only area really served well by buses, and the riders there won't put up with unreliable lemons, and can just as easily drive to a rail line or PATH. I'd hate to see Route 9 ridership decimated and having the only decent bus line down there cut back. Excellent points made. Just my opinion, part of the reasons for such spotty service are to blame partly for the geography and demographics of the area itself and the great size of the coverage area of NJT. In general I've noticed service across the state is very sporadic, which unfortunately is a major deterrent to residents actually interested in residing in various parts of NJ. Truly issues that are detrimental all around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
engineerboy6561 Posted September 10, 2013 Share #27 Posted September 10, 2013 That's the thing, it was a sleek looking coach design, slapped on a transit bus body, had fail written all over it. Looks aren't everything, not with buses anyway. I was actually hoping that DesignLine would be able to make good on this order (or really any decent-sized order in the US) because I'd like to see the manufacturer pool for quality heavy-duty buses expand a bit rather than continue to contract. The EcoSavers were beautiful buses and the turbine-electric hybrid powertrain looked like it had a lot of promise; I was rather hoping that Designline would have found a way to get better performance and reliability out of them, and that they would have wound up doing well in New York. When this came out, I was hoping that they'd learned from their mistakes on the EcoSavers, and that their bid for this order was a signal that they'd gotten the hang of building buses for fairly demanding transit applications. Instead, it seems like they traded a problematically weak powertrain for a whole host of other aggravating bugs and then just sort of dropped the ball on the contract altogether. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
46Dover Posted September 10, 2013 Share #28 Posted September 10, 2013 Eh, I guess it's not all bad...... http://www.subchat.com/buschat/read.asp?Id=283723 Aw man. Now it's gonna be hard to distinct them from 7100s. But NJT did order Academy's newest MCIs with frameless windows so there is 50% chance of them doing this with the new fleet. Yeah, all of 2 of them. I initially thought they were part of the rejected order Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fan Railer Posted September 10, 2013 Share #29 Posted September 10, 2013 Somewhat off topic but I read those Designlines uses ZF Transmissions....................please tell me NJT didn't decide on using 12 speed buses like Greyhound does with their ZF's..............UGH Just being clear, ZF doesn't just make ASTRONIC 12 speed transmissions. The Ecoshit uses the ZF Ecolife, which is a more standard 6 speed tranny. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirJokaPlaya Posted September 10, 2013 Share #30 Posted September 10, 2013 Just being clear, ZF doesn't just make ASTRONIC 12 speed transmissions. The Ecoshit uses the ZF Ecolife, which is a more standard 6 speed tranny. theyre on half of greyhound's mci 102dl3 fleet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qjtransitmaster Posted September 12, 2013 Share #31 Posted September 12, 2013 Problem is Ocean and Monmouth have lagged behind other suburban areas with transit, such as Nassau & Westchester, even Suffolk Transit, which I used to complain about, until I saw how bad Ocean Crap is. Many areas down there have no bus service at all, take Stafford Township with all it's shopping centers, there's no bus service (well there may be one that runs once a week). LBI - No bus service, despite being a major summer destination. Fischer Blvd in Toms River with Shop-Rite, no bus service. No bus service along Rt.37 to Lakewood. No bus service in countless areas in Monmouth County. Freehold Raceway Mall not served by NJT except along Rt.9 with a dicey walk, otherwise you're stuck with the once in a blue moon 67 or the Veolia routes. Suffolk Transit looks pretty good compared to what is available down there. And it can take you to some pretty rural-like places. I'm just saying some suburbs do have better transportation than others. In Monmouth & Ocean buses are only for NYC commuters, not local travel, in most cases. The problem is this stagnates ridership & promotes driving (more traffic). Ocean-Ride doesn't even serve the College! Of course Route 9 is NJT's Bread & Butter down there, and is the only area really served well by buses, and the riders there won't put up with unreliable lemons, and can just as easily drive to a rail line or PATH. I'd hate to see Route 9 ridership decimated and having the only decent bus line down there cut back. That's the thing, it was a sleek looking coach design, slapped on a transit bus body, had fail written all over it. Looks aren't everything, not with buses anyway. HUH Ocean shit should just go bye bye they did eliminate the OC7&8 recently. However there are other places people commute to trenton,philly and burlington county areasby the NJT 407 line. I am sure that if the areas served by veolia or other parts of monmouth that need service that aren't served by NYC bound routes and ocean had philly bound and trenton bound lines they would have ridership and have to run frequent to boot and would effectively act as local routes within those counties improving transit service all over there and eliminating service gaps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjbr40 Posted September 13, 2013 Share #32 Posted September 13, 2013 is passenger leg room are getting smaller on the 8000 series? I was on the 551 in both direction and found that leg room is way to small especially when someone want to recline a little. Just curios. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaTransitMan4608 Posted September 13, 2013 Share #33 Posted September 13, 2013 Hey guys... I've got some more good news.......... http://www.subchat.com/buschat/read.asp?Id=283926 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cait Sith Posted September 13, 2013 Share #34 Posted September 13, 2013 Expect the first bus(pilot) to come through late 2013/early 2014. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaTransitMan4608 Posted September 13, 2013 Share #35 Posted September 13, 2013 Expect the first bus(pilot) to come through late 2013/early 2014.Well we're not far from December so I guess we'll see it pretty soon. It's great to see NJT buying from MCI again. At least we know that they will actually deliver the buses. I think we (The Howell passengers) are in for a real treat here. Hopefully the US-9 passengers don't find any reason to complain when they arrive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cait Sith Posted September 13, 2013 Share #36 Posted September 13, 2013 Well we're not far from December so I guess we'll see it pretty soon. It's great to see NJT buying from MCI again. At least we know that they will actually deliver the buses. I think we (The Howell passengers) are in for a real treat here. Hopefully the US-9 passengers don't find any reason to complain when they arrive. Let's not say that for sure, if the interior lights are as bright as the new MCIs we got....they'll bitch and complain. Trust me, they will find something to bitch and complain about, they've done that with pretty much every MCI-type bus in the fleet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
553 Bridgeton Posted September 13, 2013 Share #37 Posted September 13, 2013 Expect the first bus(pilot) to come through late 2013/early 2014.DAMN! Hopefully this pushes the older 45s down here. 7401-7418 are shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cait Sith Posted September 13, 2013 Share #38 Posted September 13, 2013 DAMN! Hopefully this pushes the older 45s down here. 7401-7418 are shot. Honestly, I could see them pushing out the 4000s first before the 45s make their way out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfs NJT459 Posted September 13, 2013 Share #39 Posted September 13, 2013 This also means the extra NABI Subrubans at Washington Twp will stay around and be seen on Full Service routes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaTransitMan4608 Posted September 16, 2013 Share #40 Posted September 16, 2013 This also means the extra NABI Subrubans at Washington Twp will stay around and be seen on Full Service routes Yeah until about late 2014, unless for some unexplained reason the new MCI arrive ahead of schedule. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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