Tag Archives: MTS

Bus Photo of the Month: March 2023

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New Flyer XN60 1218

Location: Kettner Boulevard at B Street, San Diego, CA
Operator of Vehicle: San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS)
Date of Photo: March 9, 2022

Last March, a business trip took me to San Diego, my second time visiting the city.  I didn’t ride any buses this time (though I did ride the San Diego Trolley extension to University Towne Center), but I did get some bus photos that seemed Travelogue post worthy.  Here is one of them.

If you’re familiar with San Diego’s geography and transit routes, you may realize that Kettner Boulevard is the street where the Santa Fe Depot, which serves as the terminal for Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner and the COASTER Commuter Rail, is located.  However, the building seen in the background of this photo is noteworthy in its own right.  The McClintock Storage Warehouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the few remaining examples of a large commercial warehouse built in the 1920s when San Diego was experiencing significant growth.  The building is constructed in the same Mission Revival style as the Santa Fe Depot, which is adjacent to the McClintock Warehouse (to the left of the vantage point in this photo) and was the site of the Greater San Diego Exposition when it opened.  The building was converted to live-work lofts by 2012.

Rapid is the brand name for MTS’s BRT network.  MTS purchased New Flyer XN60 buses specifically for the Rapid routes in 2014.  These buses feature passenger information displays and those assigned to the longer distance Rapid routes have interior layouts that make the passenger experience on these longer trips more comfortable.

For more photos of San Diego MTS buses, please click here.  

Some Things Are Worth Waiting For…

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New Flyer XE60 19506
Very observant visitors to this site might have noticed two things recently.  First, it has been a very long time (nearly two years in fact) since any announcements of new photos being posted to Oren’s Transit Page have been made.  Second, the January 2023 Bus Photo of the Month came from a city that was not included on Oren’s Transit Page before.  The reasons for this are several fold.  In 2021, travel was slowly resuming and the Oren’s Transit Page Baby (as he was known then) required a level of care that was age-appropriate but one that does not facilitate frequent website updates.  In 2022, travel really took off again, as my travels took me not only up and down the Northeast Corridor but to the Florida panhandle, San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Israel, and Greece.  As you can imagine, travels that extensive generate lots of photos, which in turn, take time to organize, touch up, caption, and post.  The good news is I’ve made some headway on that front, and I believe any photos I took prior to May 2022 are now online.

The “highlights” from this update in my opinion in “chronological” order are:

The rest of 2022’s photos are still to come, and I’ve already taken one trip within the US in 2023 and I’m sure more are to come, so stay tuned.  The photos from all those travels will be posted.  Eventually.

Here is the full listing of where new photos were added to the site, with new sections highlighted in bold and italics.  

Bus Photo of the Month: October 2019

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New Flyer XN60 1104

New Flyer XN60 1104

Location: A Street between India Street and Columbia Street, San Diego, CA
Operator of Vehicle: San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS)
Date of Photo: July 16, 2014

In honor of the second annual “Free Ride Day” in San Diego, which took place yesterday, it seemed appropriate to share a photo from my 2014 trip to San Diego for the Bus Photo of the Month.  MTS uses Free Ride Day as a way to encourage San Diegans to discover how they can use the transit system as part of their regular commutes, the hope being that if people like it enough when it is free that they will become paying passengers.  In the first iteration of Free Ride Day in 2018, over 53,000 trips were taken.  No word yet on what this year’s ridership figure was.

For more photos of MTS buses, please click here.

 

Rail Photo of the Month: February 2017

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Siemens–Duewag U2 1017

Siemens–Duewag U2 1017

Location: Park Boulevard at Market Street, San Diego, CA
Operator of Vehicle: San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS)
Date of Photo: July 17, 2014

 

In recent years, streetcars and light rails have been experiencing a renaissance in the United States.  Just last year, three new streetcar systems opened in Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Washington, DC.  However, the San Diego Trolley was the first of these “second generation” streetcar and light rail systems to open in the United States.  Its initial segment opened in 1981 and it has expanded to include three lines serving 53 stations.  In 2015, the system became entirely low floor upon the retirement of the original Siemens–Duewag U2 cars, such as the one seen in this photograph.  The retirement of these high floor cars was a multi-phase project that involved redoing the station platforms across the entire network, in addition to procuring the new low floor fleet.  However, this successful completion is yet another demonstration of how the San Diego Trolley has proven itself to be a successful part of the city’s transportation network.

For more photos of the San Diego Trolley, please click here.