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New York City Buses

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NY Yankee

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These are the last of my pictures and videos from my archives

Bus operating along a highway. Midway through the video, the NYC subway is visible

[youtube]sSvUL7qySfk[/youtube]

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Does this look familiar?

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WatcherZero

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The land of no low floor buses.... no thats not really fair, just incredibly low curbs and crummy coach like designs.
 

bb21

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I assume that BX12 is part of the BRT network?
 

driver9000

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Nice shots, I've been taking an interest in the NY Subway and railways but my knowledge is still severely limited. I presume the numbers in the windscreens are the running number for the duty the bus is working.
 

Roughytuffy

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The land of no low floor buses.... no thats not really fair, just incredibly low curbs and crummy coach like designs.
Thats a bit of an unfair comment? I wonder if you have visited USA? If you do, you will find a very high percentage of low floor vehicles, included with higher technology the UK can only dream of at present. Check out products from NABI/New Flyer/Eldorado/Gillig and you will see that you can get standard diesel, CNG, LNG, Diesel Hybrid. USA City's are pushing for full clean air buses, LA for example is nearly all CNG and 90% low floor. As for road coaches, yes, they can be box like in appearence but the European flair is coming along in present designs.
 

185

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Tenerife is the same.... Going with a high floor bus full of seats, alongside an exceptionally good door-to-door minibus service for those who can't use it is a good answer to moving large numbers of people comfortably, without half the bus stood up as happens here.

Different countries do things differently, and I think it's a maybe little unfair to criticise countries which still use high floor vehicles for medium - longer trips; after all, bums on seats pays for the service, not state subsidies like in the UK.

Used Megabus ($15rtn/roundtrip) and Boltbus ($20) in the US, and embarrasingly for Amtrak ($210) the buses only took 20% longer journey times, and had free power sockets and WiFi.
 

Badger

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I think it's easy to forget we too use high foor vehicles for long trips too.

As for the low floor ones, they look very old in these pics, but I think that's just different styling? They're wider, for one thing, which makes them look odd compared to British examples. But as with trains they're also a lot less stylised, and maybe that's a good thing; too much thought is put into how buses look here rather than how they function.
 

NY Yankee

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Yep. It's called the Americans with Disabilities Act. There's a grandfather clause, meaning that it doesn't apply to stations built before 1990 (I think). However, all future stations must be accessible to the disabled. I think the same applies for buses. They originally used high floor buses with lifts, but the lifts broke down too often so they used low floor buses with ramps instead.
 

jamesontheroad

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Thats a bit of an unfair comment? I wonder if you have visited USA? If you do, you will find a very high percentage of low floor vehicles, included with higher technology the UK can only dream of at present. Check out products from NABI/New Flyer/Eldorado/Gillig and you will see that you can get standard diesel, CNG, LNG, Diesel Hybrid. USA City's are pushing for full clean air buses, LA for example is nearly all CNG and 90% low floor. As for road coaches, yes, they can be box like in appearence but the European flair is coming along in present designs.

Yep. It's called the Americans with Disabilities Act. There's a grandfather clause, meaning that it doesn't apply to stations built before 1990 (I think). However, all future stations must be accessible to the disabled. I think the same applies for buses. They originally used high floor buses with lifts, but the lifts broke down too often so they used low floor buses with ramps instead.

Something to bear in mind is the significant snowfall received by many American and Canadian cities. In my experience of living in Montréal and traveling through cities like NYC, Chicago and Edmonton during their frigid winters, it was clear that low floor buses appeared to be less capable of maintaining traction in heavy snow and ice (see this and this and this... even winter tyres - which are mandatory by law during winter months in most cities - aren't enough)

The STM in Montréal were already committed to introducing low floor buses when I first visited in 2004 (built by NovaBus just outside the city limits). Until such time as they had enough low floor buses (and during winters when old high floor buses were needed, accessible bus routes ran with alternate high and low floor buses (and these were clearly indicated on timetables), so although disabled folk or passengers with child buggies couldn't necessarily just turn up and go, they could be assured of accessible buses. I still think that's a reasonable compromise given the circumstances.
 

radamfi

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What is the situation regarding low floor buses in the highly developed parts of Europe with cold winters, e.g. Switzerland, Scandinavia?
 
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