Bus Photo of the Month: April 2021

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Oren

MAN ETB 4037

Location: Pine Street at 3rd Avenue, Seattle, WA
Operator of Vehicle: King County Metro
Date of Photo: August 13, 2004

Yesterday, King County Metro announced that it launched the “Infinity Bus.” Here is an excerpt from the agency’s blog post about its newest vehicle:

King County Metro, the region’s largest transit agency, launched a capstone mobility and engineering achievement in Seattle. The new “Infinity” articulated bus, a roughly 3-mile-long transit vehicle, forms a full loop encircling the completely-redesigned Downtown Seattle Third Avenue Transit Corridor.

The Infinity Bus provides service to destinations throughout downtown—as well as connections to other transit services—for employees, residents, and visitors. Third Avenue is Seattle’s most heavily-used transit corridor and moved more than 100,000 daily passengers in 2019.

The Infinity Bus embodies Metro’s commitment to sustainability and is part of the agency’s move to a 100% zero-emission fleet by 2040 or sooner. The new 15,840-foot vehicle is trolley-style, allowing it to pull current from overheard wires and be fully electric.

Responding to commuters wanting to travel at different times of day and not only during traditional rush hour periods, the Infinity Bus is designed to deliver highly-frequent—constant, actually—service. The bus offers arrivals and departures at all times, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

So if you haven’t figured it out yet, this was an April Fool’s Day joke, so you won’t be seeing any photos of the Infinity Bus on Oren’s Transit Page anytime soon. So instead, I am offering a photo of a bus that actually ran in Seattle at one time, a MAN electric trolleybus that was retired in 2007. I haven’t been to Seattle in over 12 years, so I am pretty confident in saying that none of the buses I photographed there on my prior visits are still in service. I certainly hope to (and expect to) visit Seattle again someday, even if there won’t be an Infinity Bus to check out on my next visit.

For more photos of King County Metro buses, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: April 2021

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Oren

Kawasaki 7000 Series

Location: Union Station, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: September 4, 2019

Last weekend, the Washington Metrorail marked its 45th anniversary. Metrorail opened on March 27, 1976. For the second year in a row, ridership on anniversary day did not resemble the crowds that excitedly rode the trains between Rhode Island Avenue and Farragut North on day one of operation. However, there is much to look forward to despite the hardships of the past year. For one, vaccines for Covid-19 are becoming more readily available in the Washington area (please get yours when it is your turn and continue to abide by CDC guidelines and recommendations both before and after receiving your shot so we can truly get back to normal). In addition, WMATA announced about two weeks ago that Hitachi Rail has been selected to build the 8000 Series cars, expected to arrive starting in 2024. The base order is for 256 but up to 800 cars could be ordered if all options are exercised. The cars will improve upon the 7000 Series cars like the one seen here, and will replace the 2000 and 3000 Series cars. Metro as it looked 45 years ago is not going to be the look of Metro for much longer.

For more photos of the WMATA 7000 Series cars, please click here.

Celebrating International Women’s Day

Posted on March 8, 2021 by Oren

Today is International Women’s Day. To mark the occasion, I want to share the following article about the history of women working in the transit industry in London, England. In the late 19th century, it was illegal for women to hold many jobs in England, including most roles in the transport sector. While women filled in certain roles during World War I and World War II, they were not able to serve in operational positions and were paid less than men to do the same work, leading to a successful strike for equal pay in 1918.

In the 1970s, the Equal Pay Act and Sex Discrimination Act came in to effect. Jill Viner became the first woman to drive a bus carrying passengers in 1974. Four years later in 1978, Hannah Dadds became the first woman train operator, working in tandem with her sister Edna, a train guard, forming the first all-female Underground crew.

The article notes that even though many women have been hired in the past 40-plus years, women and especially Black and ethnic minority women are underrepresented in London’s transport workforce when compared to the overall population, and that they are paid lower median wages.

Read the entire article about the history of women working in London transport on the London Transport Museum’s website by clicking here. In addition, you can read more about Jill Viner’s story here, and you can read Hannah Dadds’s story here.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Bus Photo of the Month: March 2021

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Oren

Gillig Advantage Trolley Replica 922

Location: Central Avenue at 6th Street, Saint Petersburg, FL
Operator of Vehicle: Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority
Date of Photo: March 13, 2019

Yesterday, I wrote about advertising wraps on transit vehicles and how reactions to them in the transit enthusiast community can be mixed. If there is one topic on which there is a certain amount of consensus, it is the general derision for buses that are made to look like trollies. While there may be a certain aesthetic charm and appeal to the population at large with these vehicle designs, transit fans tend to prefer authentic trollies, streetcars, and trams over buses such as these. The bus featured here is manufactured by Gillig. Basically, Gillig offers a version of its standard Advantage low floor bus that is “[o]utfitted with solid oak seats, “brass” stanchions, cupola lighting, and cow catcher.” Agencies that purchase these trolley replicas generally operate them on tourist oriented services. In PSTA’s case, they advertise four “trolley routes” on their website where these vehicles can be found.

What do you think of trolley replica buses?

For more photos of Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority buses, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: March 2021

Posted on March 1, 2021 by Oren

S70/Avanto LRV 211

Location: Mall of America, Bloomington, MN
Operator of Vehicle: Metro Transit
Date of Photo: April 9, 2017

Advertising wraps on transit vehicles can be controversial among transit enthusiasts. Some argue that they are ugly, make it difficult to see out from inside the vehicle, and there’s already too much advertising on transit properties. Others argue that they change things up and make an otherwise uniform fleet of vehicles have some variety among them. I think some wraps look good, and others I could do without. However, who doesn’t like Pacman? This wrap, advertising a new Minnesota lottery scratch-off game in 2017, features Pacman and the ghosts from the eponymous video games. I certainly think it is an eye catching design since these characters are so well known (who hasn’t heard of Pacman?). The train itself is at the Mall of America station, the southern terminus of the METRO Blue Line, which was renovated in 2019.

Are there any transit advertising wraps that you particularly like or dislike? Share your answer in the comments below!

For more photos of the Metro Transit Light Rail, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: February 2021

Posted on February 2, 2021 by Oren

Alstom Citadis 302 008

Location: HaDavidka Station, Jerusalem, Israel
Operator of Vehicle: Citipass
Date of Photo: December 16, 2013

Despite the trend of milder winters in the Washington, DC area, scenes such as the one I featured in the Bus Photo of the Month for February 2021 aren’t all that uncommon. You’ll find plenty of photos of DC transit operations in the snow on this website (as well as others). On the other hand, significant snow in Jerusalem is a much more uncommon occurrence. Like Washington, Jerusalem has had more mild winters recently. Usually, the city would get one dusting of snow each winter, which would grind the Israeli capital to a halt as the city’s snow removal infrastructure borders on non-existent. After several winters with no snow accumulation at all, there were significant snowstorms in both January and December of 2013. In this photo, the light rail right-of-way through the center of the city has been cleared to allow train service to resume, mostly by pushing it to the sides of the tracks. As a result, the accumulation appears to be much larger than the actual 16 to 28 inches (40 to 70 centimeters) that actually fell, but regardless, this photo captured a sight one rarely sees most winters in Jerusalem.

For more photos of Jerusalem Light Rail Rolling Stock, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: February 2021

Posted on February 2, 2021 by Oren

New Flyer XDE40 7225

Location: 16th Street, NW at Hemlock Street, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: January 25, 2016

The Washington, DC area got its first measurable snowfall since 2018 this past weekend. If you’re a winter weather lover, the nation’s capital has not been a great place to be in recent years, with the daily high temperature in excess of 32 degrees Fahrenheit for nearly two years. That also means if you like getting or seeing transit photos dashing through the snow, you’ve been out of luck (at least in the DC area). With this past weekend’s storm, there were finally a few inches of measurable snow in the WMATA service area to photograph vehicles in, if that is how one wished to spend his or her Sunday snow day. (Those in Philadelphia, New York, and other points to the north and east have even more snow to photograph, but fewer transit vehicles to see running through it, as service was significantly curtailed as a safety precaution.) Given the circumstances, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight a photo taken during the last really big snowfall in the District of Columbia. In 2016, a blizzard dumped over two feet of snow in the DC area, forcing the suspension of all WMATA bus and rail service for two days on January 23 and 24. This photo was taken when service resumed, albeit on a limited basis with many routes remaining suspended and many of those that were able to operate being detoured at points along their routes, on January 25.

For more photos of WMATA’s New Flyer XDE40 buses, please click here.

Enough Teases, Here’s What’s New and Updated for the Start of 2021!

Posted on February 1, 2021 by Oren

Anyone who knows where I’ve traveled or has visited the site with some frequency over the years may have noticed that the Bus Photo of the Month for January 2021 was from a city that had not been included on Oren’s Transit Page before, and that I’ve been highlighting a number of new website sections over the past few weeks.

The biggest and most noteworthy additions are the brand new sections for Baltimore, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin. As I noted in a recent post, there was a certain amount of irony to the fact I grew up 40 miles from Baltimore and am an avid Orioles fan, yet the city had not been featured on this site until recently. Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin were destinations that I traveled to in late 2019 and early 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic, and I am thankful to have had the opportunity to make those trips when I did.

I also took advantage of some time I had recently to move some photos that had been on the Uncaptioned Photos page for quite awhile and put them in more appropriate places on the website, most notably, the photos of the Pikes Peak Cog Railway now have their own page. Perhaps you found the new material on your own, but if not, here is the full listing of where new photos were recently added to the site, with new sections highlighted in bold and italics.

United States

How the Grand Canyon and Transportation are Connected

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Oren

On our 2019 summer vacation, after spending several days in Las Vegas with the Oren’s Transit Page extended family, Mrs. OTP and I rented a car to drive to the Grand Canyon for a few more days of vacation on our own. Our rationale was that seeing as how difficult it is to get to the Grand Canyon and that we were in the general neighborhood so to speak, we might as well take advantage of the opportunity to go since neither one of us had been there before. We were just two of the 5,974,411 people to visit the Grand Canyon that year, but getting there is not a simple unless one lives very close to the Grand Canyon itself.

View of the Grand Canyon, August 20, 2019

Today, about 90 percent of visitors to the Grand Canyon go to the South Rim, and we were among them. The South Rim is about a 4 hour drive from Phoenix and about a 5 hour drive from Las Vegas. The closest airport with commercial service to the South Rim is Flagstaff, only about 90 minutes away from the Grand Canyon by car, but service there is limited to flights to and from Phoenix. Dallas, and Denver, so most would need to connect in order to get there. However, prior to the improvement of area roads in the 1960s, getting to the Grand Canyon was even more complicated than it is today.

For the first half of the 20th Century, basically the only way in to and out of what is now Grand Canyon Village was by public transport of various sorts. At first, travelers had to hire buggies or rent horses from the tour operators who set up along the South Rim starting in the 1890s in order to travel from the railroad depots at Williams, Flagstaff, or Ash Fork to the canyon. train. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built a 64 mile long branch line from Williams in order to bring tourists to the canyon’s edge, before the area was part of the National Park System. The line was completed in 1901. The railway also built the El Tovar Hotel adjacent to its Grand Canyon station. One could make a very strong argument that if it weren’t for the railroad, the critical mass needed to advocate for preserving the natural beauty of the Grand Canyon might not have been realized so quickly, and the area would not have come under the jurisdiction of the federal government in 1906 and ultimately the National Park Service in 1919.

Grand Canyon Railway Depot, August 20, 2019

While the branch line to the South Rim was not used by passenger services after 1968 and freight service after 1974 until private investors and operators reinstated the service in 1989, it has become quite popular since its restoration. There is at least one round trip each day from Williams to the South Rim, and about 25,000 passengers use the line each year. For many years, there was an organized transfer between the Southwest Chief at the Williams Junction Amtrak Station and the Williams Depot used by the Grand Canyon Railway, though this was discontinued at the end of 2017.

EMD F40PH 239 at the Grand Canyon Railway Depot, August 20, 2019

Once at the park itself, transit still plays an important role in how people get around. The National Park Service has operated a system of shuttle bus routes along the South Rim since 1974, in order to reduce vehicular traffic within the park itself. In fact, to get to viewpoints along the Hermit Road, one must use the shuttles at certain times of year. The system works quite well, as the buses allow hikers who do not wish to walk along the 13 miles of the South Rim where shuttle bus service is available to use the bus for some segments instead.

New Flyer C40LF C-10 at Hermit’s Rest, August 20, 2019

So while the transportation at the Grand Canyon today is not a conventional public transit system, it is difficult to imagine what the Grand Canyon National Park would look like were it not for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway bringing tourists to the South Rim in the early 20th century or the shuttle bus system that has been in operation since the 1970s. And for those hardy travelers who wish to experience the difficulties of getting to the even more remote North Rim (where only ten percent of Grand Canyon visitors go), despite being only about 10 miles from the South Rim Visitor Center as the crow flies, it is a 225 mile, 5 hour long drive from one rim to the other.

Photos from Vegas don’t have to stay in Vegas

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Oren

The Bellagio Fountains, Paris Las Vegas, and Bally’s Las Vegas, August 15, 2019

Saying that City X is unlike any other city in the world might sound cliché, but I think there are cities that truly have a different vibe that no other city can come close to replicating. For example, I was reminded of the grandeur of Washington, DC’s main downtown avenues and the sweeping views from the National Mall while standing on the Monumental Axis in Brasilia. Walking through the markets of Istanbul triggered senses similar to walking through the markets in the Old City of Jerusalem. However, Las Vegas is truly unlike any other city that I have been to on account of the many casinos and their varying architectural styles. Just walking somewhere is a tourist activity in and of itself.

The Las Vegas transit system is also notable for several features. Firstly, I think it is fair to say the transit system is simultaneously catering to two different markets. There is a transit system geared towards the needs of the local population, connecting where they live to where they work and shop. The second market is the tourist market, which relies on the transit system to get from attraction to attraction along the Strip and in the Downtown area. There is overlap between the markets, for example, the Deuce route along the Strip is the main route in this corridor and used by both groups, but my feeling was that the RTC is catering to two distinct groups and needs simultaneously.

Secondly, the network is notable for the amount of privately operated routes and modes over the course of the city’s history. The privately operated Las Vegas Transit System (LVTS) was not taken over by the public RTC until the early 1990s, as LVTS was able to subsidize its residential routes by charging high fares on its route serving the Strip. The Las Vegas Monorail is a privately owned enterprise that received no public funding for its construction or operation (though ownership was transfered to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority after its private operator declared bankruptcy in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic).

Keeping with the city’s reputation of being unlike any other place, while it is not the only North American transit operator to use double decker buses, it is the only one I can think of that does not use them primarily on commuter routes with little turnover at each stop. While this isn’t uncommon in places such as London, it is unusual for a North American transit property.

Observing and photographing the system is also quite the experience. Pedestrian crowds often make it difficult to get the types of shots I typically prefer, focusing on the vehicle and its architectural or natural surroundings. Heavy traffic also makes it hard to set up and get shots of the vehicles with the unique casino buildings as backdrops. Finally, nighttime photography is also challenging due to the amount of artificial light created by billboards and other illuminated displays, forcing one to “unlearn” some of the tricks usually used for those types of shots.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas when I did, as it is fair to say a trip to the city going forward is not going to be anything like how it was when I went in August 2019 in the near future. I do hope the city experiences a full recovery as the pandemic subsides, as tourism and entertainment are the primary workforce sectors in the city and many are likely experiencing hardship due to the lack of tourists visiting the city. Is it high on my list of places to make a return trip to? Probably not, as I can think of many other cities that I’d like to visit for a first time before going to Las Vegas for a second time, but I would also certainly welcome the opportunity to go back sometime if the occasion was right.

A selection of highlights from the Las Vegas section can be seen below, or you can see all the photo galleries by clicking here.