Bus Photo of the Month: January 2020

Posted on January 2, 2020 by Oren

Proterra Catalyst 3001

Location: New Hampshire Avenue at Sunderland Place, NW, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle: District Department of Transportation
Date of Photo: September 7, 2018

Yesterday, I shared a photo of a vehicle type that will not be serving passengers in the new decade. Today, we will turn our focus towards the future and look at a vehicle that I expect to be serving more and more people in the next ten years.

There has been a longstanding desire in the transit world to operate electric vehicles due to their energy efficiencies. While electric powered trolley buses or trackless trollies have been around for many years, I think it is only recently that bus manufacturers have developed rubber tired battery powered vehicles that do not need to run under a wire all or most of the time. Although 99 percent of the world’s electric buses currently operate in China, they are gradually becoming more widespread elsewhere. While it is a far cry from the 421,000 electric buses in China as of 2019, there are about 300 electric buses serving transit agencies in the United States and that number is growing. In fact, as of November 2019, American demand for electric buses has exceeded manufacturing capacity for the first time, and only five states (Arkansas, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia) do not have a single transit agency planning to procure electric buses if they have not done so already.

I’ll hopefully write about my first time on board one of DDOT’s Proterra electric buses that have been a part of the DC Circulator fleet since 2018 sometime soon. But in the meantime, enjoy one of the first photos I took of an electric Circulator bus in late 2018.

Have you been on an electric bus yet? If so, where was it and what did you think of it? Post about it in the comments below!

For more photos of DC Circulator Proterra buses, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: January 2020

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Oren

CLRV 4016

Location: Spadina Avenue at King Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Operator of Vehicle: Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)
Date of Photo: March 11, 2007

It is the start of a new (Gregorian) year and decade, but some transit vehicles will not be seeing revenue service in either one. There are several vehicle retirements one could choose to profile here, but today, we are looking at the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle (CLRV) fleet that made its final run this past Sunday, December 29. These cars, and their articulated ALRV counterparts, were designed and ordered when the TTC’s fleet of PCC streetcars were at or near the end of their useful lives. The first CLRV arrived on TTC property on December 29, 1979, exactly 42 years to the day before they would be retired.

The CLRV was designed with the intention that it could be used as a standard streetcar design across all of Canada. However, like similar attempts to design a universal transit vehicle in the United States, this did not prove to be a successful venture. Although the MBTA in Boston leased three CLRV cars to test on their Green Line, they ultimately opted not to purchase CLRVs. Ultimately, the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority was the only agency to purchase light rail vehicles from the Urban Transportation Development Corporation that built the CLRVs. Due to the specialized parts on the CLRV that were not mass produced due to the fact no other systems operated these cars, the TTC found these cars increasingly difficult to maintain over time.

As the CLRVs approached retirement age, the TTC opted to replace them with Bombardier Flexity Outlook streetcars rater than refurbish the CLRV cars. The last ALRV was removed from service on September 2, 2019, and the final CLRV was removed from service this past Sunday. The TTC is retaining some cars for inclusion in a historical fleet, selling a handful of cars to transit museums, and scrapping the remainder.

I had the opportunity to ride these cars in 2007, which is the only time I’ve been to Toronto (though I’d like to go back some day). It also turns out I got a photo of CLRV 4046 during that trip; 4046 is the only streetcar of this type to have air conditioning installed (it was done as a trial that was not carried over to any other cars).

To see a news report from the CBC about the retirement of these cars, click here.

For more photos of the TTC’s CLRV streetcars, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: December 2019

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Oren

Gillig Advantage 606

Location: Campus Road at Central Avenue, Ithaca, NY
Operator of Vehicle: Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit
Date of Photo: February 14, 2007

In some places, it doesn’t take more than a few snowflakes to shut down transit service. In others, snow needs to be measured in feet before that thought even crosses anyone’s mind. TCAT in Ithaca, New York is quite familiar with winter weather and knows how to operate in it. Same goes for the other local institutions in the area, such as Cornell University, which rarely cancels classes due to snowfall. However, it does happen on rare occasions, such as yesterday, when nearly a foot of snow fell as students were returning from Thanksgiving break. It was one of Cornell’s rare snow days, the university has only had four complete shutdowns for snow in the past 26 years.

In light of this, it seemed appropriate to share a photo from another Cornell Snow Day, albeit a partial one (classes weren’t cancelled until about 10:00 AM) on February 14, 2007. TCAT kept the buses running for much of the morning, ultimately suspending service after the university closure took effect.

For more photos of TCAT’s Gillig Advantage Buses, please click here.

Oren’s Reading List: NYT Interactive on the NYC Subway Map

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Oren

I’ve posted a number of articles about the design of subway maps over the years here on The Travelogue. Let’s just say the New York City Subway map is not my favorite by any means, and while the 1979 Tauranac version that is in use today (albeit with plenty of revisions over the years) certainly has some revolutionary features, I don’t think it stands on the same pedestal as “classics” such as Harry Beck’s London Underground diagram.

Yesterday, the New York Times published an interactive article entitled The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before. It is a very well done piece and I learned some things I hadn’t known before. For example, did you know that there are only ten buildings marked on the NYC subway map?

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.

Rail Photo of the Month: December 2019

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Oren

CAF 8000 Series 8007

Location: Mar de Cristal, Madrid, Spain
Operator of Vehicle: Metro de Madrid
Date of Photo: June 10, 2008

Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page is soon heading off to Spain for vacation, leaving me all alone at home to continue going through my seemingly never ending photo queue and other website related projects.

(OK OK, I’ll miss her.)

However, it seemed like a fitting occasion to share a photo of my favorite Madrid Metro car class, and the car class most likely to greet her upon arrival at the Madrid Airport. The 8000 Series cars debuted on Line 8, which connects the airport to Nuevos Ministerios. I really like their sleek exterior design, and if memory serves correctly, they had a great railfan window behind the full width cab when I was first in Madrid in 2005 (I believe this was no longer the case in by 2008). These trains feature open gangways and provide a smooth ride while reaching speeds in excess of 62 MPH (100 KPH) at several points on their journeys to and from the airport. In addition to operating on Line 8, these trains can also be found on lines 9, 10, 11, and 12.

For more photos of the CAF 8000 Series cars, please click here.

The Royal District of Brussels

Posted on November 21, 2019 by Oren

As promised in my Rail Photo of the Month for November 2019, I am highlighting another photo from Brussels. The tram seen here is the same one as in my last post, but now we are looking at the rear of the tram after it passed my vantage point in Place Royal. You can read more about this specific tram in the post linked above.

The Place Royal was constructed between 1775 and 1782. Originally, the square was the site of the market that was adjacent to the former Palace of Coudenberg. The Palace de Coudenberg burned down in February of 1731, and funds were not available to reconstruct the area for 40 years. Today, some of the most significant museums in the entire city, including the Musical Instruments Museum and the BELvue Museum are located in the vicinity of this square. Having only about 8 hours total on my layover between flights at the Brussels Airport on this particular day, I visited these museums due to my interest in their collections and proximity to each other, the Grand Place, and the Brussels-Central Station. Conveniently enough, tram tracks also run through the square and the notable architecture in and along the streets that converge here make for some interesting photography opportunities.

For starters, the tram tracks divide in order to ring the statue of Godfrey of Bouillon, who led the first crusade in 1096. To the right of the tram, we can see the Hôtel des Brasseurs, which now houses part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Looking down towards the south and the background of the picture, some of the building facades along Rue de la Régence, a main thoroughfare are visible. The Rue de la Régence leads to the Palais de Justice. At the time of its construction in 1883, it was the largest building in the world and it remains one of the most visible landmarks in the city due to its size.

Rail Photo of the Month: November 2019

Posted on November 2, 2019 by Oren

La Brugeoise PCC Tram 7824

Location: Rue Royale at Place des Palais, Brussels, Belgium
Operator of Vehicle: Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company
Date of Photo: November 21, 2013

Six years ago this month, I made my second visit (and first planned visit) to Brussels. The story of my first visit to Brussels is probably best told in its own post, but the short version is that I had 90 minutes to kill due to a missed connection between the Thalys and ICE trains there in June 2008. This made my second visit seem like an eternity in comparison, a whole eight hours between flights when traveling from Portugal to Israel. As a result of having such an extended period of time in which to explore the city, I was able to see more than just the trams that happened to pass through the area by Gare du Midi. Here is one of the photos I took that day, of a PCC tram built by La Brugeoise, a Belgian train manufacturer, in the 1970s. Although La Brugeoise has since been bought out by Bombardier, these PCC trams continue to serve the Belgian capital today.

If all goes to plan, I will make two additional posts about my visits to Brussels later this month.

For more photos of trams in Brussels, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: November 2019

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Oren

Gillig Advantage 4019

Location: West Summit Hill Drive, Knoxville, TN
Operator of Vehicle: Knoxville Area Transit (KAT)
Date of Photo: November 28, 2014

My family never had any particularly strong Thanksgiving traditions. However, Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page comes from a family that has been gathering for a family reunion each Thanksgiving for decades. There are two significant upsides to this situation. The first is that there is virtually no discussion about whose family we spend the holiday with, which is a topic that I understand to be a difficult one in some homes. The second (and the one probably of more interest to the people reading this) is that since the reunion moves from place to place each year, I have had the opportunity to photograph and ride transit in places that I had never been previously (though that streak comes to an end this year as the reunion returns to a “repeat” location since I’ve been invited for the first time). Within this second upside, there is an upside and a downside. The upside is that many transit agencies operate a regular, weekday schedule on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which means transit fans such as myself get to enjoy rush hour frequencies on a day with less street traffic, which is a pleasure. The downside is that service is sometimes limited over the holiday weekend, resulting in situations such as what I experienced when we were in Knoxville for Thanksgiving in 2014. Knoxville Area Transit doesn’t have a particularly large transit system to begin with, so the holiday schedules coupled with the long headways in that system resulted in my getting a single transit photo during the reunion there. So in honor of the holiday at the end of this month, for the Bus Photo of the Month for November 2019, I present my lone photo (to date) from Knoxville, TN.

For more information about Knoxville Area Transit, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: October 2019

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Oren

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: October 2019

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Oren

2200 Series 2222

Location: Polk Station, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 30, 2007

Yesterday, the Chicago Transit Authority celebrated its anniversary. On October 1, 1947, the CTA assumed the operations of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company (the ‘L’ system) and the Chicago Surface Lines (the streetcar system). In recent years, the CTA has marked the occasion with a “Customer Appreciation Day.” This year’s edition included the first public run of the 6000 Series trains since their retirement on December 4, 1992. The 6000 Series cars were introduced in 1950 and featured “blinker doors” to facilitate better movement within the cars for ingress and egress. They were also the first cars in the CTA rail fleet to be married pairs.

To celebrate its 72nd anniversary, the CTA ran the cars in the Loop during the midday yesterday. I wasn’t in Chicago, so I don’t have any photos of the event. (This post could turn in to a lament about how it has been too long since I’ve visited Chicago, but it won’t.) Instead, I decided it was fitting to share a photo of a 2200 Series Car that featured the same type of blinker doors that the 6000 Series cars featured. The 2200 Series cars were retired in August 2013, and like the 6000 Series cars, a limited number have been preserved for historical purposes.

For more photos of the CTA 2200 Series Cars, please click here.

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