Bus Photo of the Month: July 2023

NABI 40-LFW 7780

Arcadia Street at Main Street, Los Angeles, CA
Operator of Vehicle: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Date of Photo: July 11, 2014

Nine years ago this month, I arrived in Los Angeles for the first time.  Since then, I have visited the United States’s second largest city on two more occasions.  Another trip appeared to be in the offing for next month but that ended up not materializing.  In any event, I thought it would be fitting to share a photo from my first trip to the City of Angels this month.  I hope you enjoy it!

For more photos of LACMTA Buses, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: January 2023

NABI 40-LFW Gen III/CNG 41117

Location: Commerce Street at Akard Street, Dallas, TX
Operator of Vehicle: Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART)
Date of Photo: November 12, 2021

This month marks the one year anniversary of the launch of “DARTZoom”, the Dallas bus network’s redesign.  That redesign, like others in recent years in cities such as Baltimore and Houston, is meant to increase the frequency of service while reducing travel times across the network.  I visited Dallas for the first time in November of 2021, at which time the original bus network was still in place.  One of the first things that becomes apparent very quickly in planning a trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is that things are very spread out and many things simply aren’t close enough to transit service to be truly transit accessible.  As a result, Dallas has one of the largest light rail networks in the country by virtue of the area it is trying to serve, even though it isn’t an area that one thinks of as having robust public transit.

Have you been on Dallas’s buses since the network redesign was implemented?

For more photos of DART buses, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2016

NABI 40-LFW 7051

NABI 40-LFW 7051

Location: 1st Street at Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA
Operator of Vehicle: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA)
Date of Photo: July 14, 2014

Los Angeles has far more public transit than one might expect for a city with such a car-centric reputation.  In fact, it has the second largest bus fleet in the entire United States, with almost 2,500 buses!  Los Angeles is also the inspiration for at least one other city’s current paint scheme.  Since June 24, 000, LACMTA has been operating the “Metro Rapid” brand.  Metro Rapid service is limited bus service that runs in the same corridors as standard “Metro Local” routes, with some of the components found on full fledged bus rapid transit (BRT) lines.  One of the BRT features incorporated in to Metro Rapid is a special paint scheme for the limited stop buses.  In the photo above, the Metro Rapid bus is painted maroon, while the Metro Local bus is in the “standard” orange LACMTA livery.  I’m pretty sure that WMATA’s relatively new “MetroLocal” and “MetroExtra” schemes are inspired by Los Angeles’s schemes.  This theory is bolstered by the fact that the general manager of WMATA at the time those schemes were adopted was John Catoe, who spent much of his career at LACMTA.

Personally, I’m not a fan of branded buses unless the operating agency can ensure that the proper bus is almost always assigned to the proper line.  Otherwise, the branding is diluted.  However, from what I could tell during my stay there, Metro Rapid buses seem to stick to the Metro Rapid routes and the same goes for the various other paint schemes that LACMTA has employed.  What do you think of branded buses like those featured in the photo of the month this month?  Leave a comment with your opinion!

For more photos of LACMTA’s buses and their various paint schemes, please click here.