Rail Photo of the Month: July 2020

Posted on July 2, 2020 by Oren

Siemens SD-400 4251

Location: Station Square, Pittsburgh, PA
Operator of Vehicle: Port Authority of Allegheny County
Date of Photo: November 29, 2019

There are a number of noteworthy items of interest for a transit enthusiast in Pittsburgh, one of which is the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel. Following the removal of buses from the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel became the only transit tunnel in the United States to serve both buses and light rail trains, though the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel does not have any intermediate stations (whereas the Seattle tunnel did). The tunnel opened in 1904, significantly improving access from the south to Downtown Pittsburgh by allowing transit vehicles to avoid the hilly topography on Mount Washington. The natural geography and convergence of several transit lines made South Hills Junction a logical point for a tunnel to Downtown to be built. In 1977, the South Busway, the first of Pittsburgh’s three busways, opened; this bus corridor ends at South Hills Junction and then the buses continue through the tunnel to Downtown. At the north end, the tunnel originally allowed streetcars to proceed in to downtown via the Smithfield Street Bridge, and buses still do this today. PCC Streetcars have solely used the Panhandle Bridge to cross the Monongahela River since 1985 (the PCC streetcars were mostly replaced by modern light rail vehicles in 1987).

Needless to say, it is quite fascinating merely to watch the buses and trains enter and leave the transit tunnel at either end, and riding through the tunnel is quite the experience as well!

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

Bus Photo of the Month: July 2020

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Oren

Gillig Advantage 59096

Location: Downtown Sarasota Transfer Station, Sarasota, FL
Operator of Vehicle: Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT)
Date of Photo: March 15, 2019

Usually bus routes are operated by a single agency, for as one can imagine, coordinating service across multiple agencies is potentially quite challenging. As it is, even within a single agency, the overwhelming majority of agencies often avoid splitting the operation of a single route among different garages when possible. And the other split agency operation that I can think of (routes 400 and 402 connecting Jerusalem and Bnei Brak in Israel) was changed to have a single operator for each route in order to simplify the service. Yet the bus route connecting Sarasota and Bradenton, one of the busiest transit lines on the Florida Suncoast, is a split operation between Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT) and Sarasota County Area Transit (SCAT). In preparing the new Tampa Bay & Florida Suncoast section, I was unable to find any explanation for how this split operation came to be or any other historical information, though I did find proposed plans to have MCAT operate the entire route on its own.

Do you know how this split operation on the 99 between Sarasota and Bradenton came about? Can you think of another example of a route operated by multiple agencies like this? If so, please leave a comment below, as I (and I’m sure others) would love to learn more about these unique operations.

For more photos of Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT) buses, please click here.

Revisiting 2019 With New Photos on Oren’s Transit Page

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Oren

The age of Coronavirus may not be good for traveling, but it is good for emptying out the “photo queue” of pictures I would like to post and share here on my site. With this update, I believe that nearly all the transit photos I took during 2019 and intended to post to Oren’s Transit Page are in fact posted!

Last March, I was able to attend Orioles spring training in Sarasota, and also spent time in Tampa on that trip as well. I had never been to the west coast of Florida before so it was interesting to see what the transit operations on the Florida Suncoast are like. With this site update, you can too, as there are over 30 photos from this area now on the site! You can find the new galleries for HART (including the TECO Streetcar Line), PSTA, MCAT, and SCAT in the Tampa & Florida Suncoast section. (How’s that for some agency alphabet soup?)

In June, a planned trip to Boston became a road trip due to a flight cancelled following thunderstorms. Since our return trip was on my birthday, Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page indulged me and permitted a stop at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, CT. (We had lunch at a favorite restaurant of hers in New Haven as well).

Throughout the summer, many transit fans’ attention was turned to Alexandria, VA, where DASH acquired Neoplan articulated buses from Bee Line in Westchester County, NY in order to supplement service during WMATA’s Platform Improvement Project on the Blue and Yellow Lines. WMATA, DASH, and contracted tour bus operators operated the various bus bridges that replaced Metrorail service. I ventured out one day to photograph the shuttle buses and ride one of the former Bee Line Neoplans, and those photos are also now online. While this may be the “highlight” of the newest additions to the site from the DC area, there are a total of 15 new DASH photos, 6 new ART photos, and over 50 new WMATA photos.

Finally, in November, I was in Pittsburgh for the second time (my first trip was in 2015). I didn’t take as many transit rides while I was there as I had planned, but I did take about 50 photos of PAT buses and light rail vehicles that are now on the website, including some of their buses decorated for the Christmas holiday season and the Monongahela Incline, which I rode for the first time.

You may have noticed that I wrote that nearly all the photos from 2019 are now online, so you may also be wondering what is still to come. In August, I visited both Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, so photos of the transit operations in those places (did you know the National Park Service operates a fleet of New Flyer C40LF and C40LFR buses on the South Rim of the canyon?), as well as many photos from a city taken over the course of many years that you would have expected to be on my site already in light of its proximity to Oren’s Transit Page Headquarters will be in the next site update. Stay tuned!

Here is the complete list of pages with new photos in this update:

Bus Photo of the Month: June 2020

Posted on June 2, 2020 by Oren

New Flyer D60HF 5519

Location: Lexington Avenue at East 75th Street, New York, NY
Operator of Vehicle: MTA New York City Transit
Date of Photo: April 25, 2012

I’ve spilled some digital ink on the retirement of various New York City Subway cars and the venerable RTS buses, but other buses in New York City that have distinctions of their own have been retired in the time I was redesigning the New York City section of this website. This post will profile one of them, the New Flyer D60HF, the first articulated bus to operate in the Big Apple.

The first D60HF buses arrived in 1996 and debuted in The Bronx on the Bx1 route. In late 1999, they were introduced to Manhattan on the M79 and M86 routes. Ultimately, New York City Transit (and the MTA Bus Company) would order and operate several hundred D60HF buses. For most of their careers, they operated in The Bronx and Manhattan. They also made some appearances on routes in Queens and Brooklyn towards the end of their careers in New York.

In addition to being the first articulated buses in New York and the only high floor articulated bus model ever ordered by NYCT, the D60HF was one of the first bus models in New York to be built with a front door wheelchair lift, and was the bus type that was used when the first Select Bus Service route, the Bx12, was launched in 2008.

As a busfan, I enjoy getting to ride articulated buses, and I really enjoyed sitting in the pair of seats in the D60HF’s articulated joint. However, commuters were not always as excited by the sight of articulated buses on their routes. When converting a route from standard buses to articulated buses, the MTA often reduces the frequency of the buses slightly since each articulated bus can carry more people than a standard 40 foot bus.

Although the D60HF made its last revenue trip on March 31, 2019, articulated buses remain a significant part of New York City’s bus fleet. They operate in four of the five boroughs, and while some of the articulated buses in the current fleet were built by NovaBUS, New Flyer’s articulated Xcelsior model has replaced some of their D60HF predecessors.

For more photos of NYCT’s New Flyer D60HF Buses, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: June 2020

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Oren

R46 5984

Location: Smith-9th Streets Station, New York, NY
Operator of Vehicle: MTA New York City Transit
Date of Photo: August 6, 2002

Last month, I posted about the retirement of the R32 subway cars. In conjunction with the launch of the redesigned New York section of this site, it seems appropriate to use the Rail Photo of the Month post for June to highlight what is now the oldest subway car class in New York City, the R46. I’m not going to mince words; these are not my favorite NYC subway cars. However, they do have a certain character thanks to their wood paneled windscreens and the New York seals on their interior walls. Their LCD side destination signs also give the impression to some they are newer than they actually are, as these cars were manufactured starting in 1975 and are now 45 years old (two cars even had special red, white, and blue stripes and stars to commemorate the U.S. Bicentennial, shortly after their delivery).

For many years, the R46 was a mainstay on the Queens Boulevard Line, including the F and G lines. Therefore, many railfans have photos of these cars at the Smith-9th Streets Station, the highest elevated station on the New York City Subway. The backdrop of photos of trains approaching from the north is Lower Manhattan and before 9/11 this included the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. With the upcoming installation of CBTC on the Queens Boulevard Line, the R46 has been shifted to other lines and the R160 has become the most common train type on the F while the G is now operated by R68s. However, the R46 will remain an active car type for the New York City Subway until the arrival of the R211s, expected in the early 2020s.

For more photos of the R46, please click here.

New York City is Back on Oren’s Transit Page

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Oren

When I redesigned my website to use WordPress instead of coding everything by hand as I had since initial launch nearly 20 years ago, I opted to launch the new design without including the New York City section. That decision was made in January 2016 due to the fact that rebuilding process included reuploading all the original images on the site, reentering their captions, and building out pages for each city, agency, and vehicle type. The New York City section has always been one of the largest on my site, and it seemed better to push out the redesigned website minus one section than to hold it back until it was 100 percent complete. Finding the time to complete the redesign of the New York section hasn’t always been easy, especially since I much prefer to add new content rather than tinker with code and rebuild old pages when I have time to work on the site. However, nearly four years later, I am pleased to announce that the New York City section of the site has been rebuilt and many new photos have been added to this section.

Since the redesigned Oren’s Transit Page was launched, there have been some significant changes to the New York City Transit scene. The most notable development is probably the opening of the long awaited Second Avenue Subway, but that isn’t all that has happened in recent years. The Hudson Yards Extension of the 7 line opened in 2015, and multiple subway car types, including the seemingly ageless R32s and the R42s have been retired and the R179s have been introduced. The venerable RTS buses have also been retired and New Flyer and NovaBUS now fulfill most of the MTA’s equipment purchases. The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North fleets remain dominated by new car types, though a handful of M3s continue to hang on at each railroad. The “Oculus”, the centerpiece of the reconstructed PATH station at the World Trade Center, officially opened in March 2016.

Between images that had been on the site prior to 2016 and new images added during the redesign (including pretty much everything that was New York related in my photo queue at this point), there are now nearly 1,400 photos of New York City transportation here on Oren’s Transit Page. I invite you to check them out at the redesigned New York City section, and as always, there will be more to come when my travels take me to New York.

Click here to visit the New York City section of Oren’s Transit Page. A very small selection of teaser photos from this update can be found below.

New Flyer XD40 4827 on Cadman Plaza West at Middagh Street, September 4, 2019

R62A 1750 at 42nd Street-Grand Central, March 24, 2017

1958 GMC TDH-5106 Old Look 9098 on East 42nd Street at 3rd Avenue, December 12, 2012

M-3 at White Plains, April 24, 2012

34th Street-Hudson Yards, December 27, 2015

Bus Photo of the Month: May 2020

Posted on May 2, 2020 by Oren

Neoplan AN460LF 1132

Location: South Station, Boston, MA
Operator of Vehicle: Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority
Date of Photo: January 28, 2018

The MBTA Silver Line is certainly a curious hybrid within one of the few transit agencies in the United States to operate such a wide variety of route types. The line is served by buses, but portions of the line operate in a tunnel where the buses are powered by electricity rather than diesel. There are named stations with signage in the style of the agency’s rail lines, and the route appears in its own color on the system map. But once the buses reach the Boston Waterfront district, they operate on the surface seemingly like any other MBTA bus service would.

The dual powered Neoplan buses on the SL1, SL2, and SL3 routes are reaching retirement age, and the MBTA is already testing battery powered New Flyer buses that could replace the original Silver Line fleet. While the exact plans for replacing the Neoplans are still undecided from what I understand, there will only be so many more opportunities to ride these buses on this one of a kind line in Boston.

For more photos of the MBTA’s Neoplan AN460LF buses, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: May 2020

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Oren

R32 3521

Location: 125th Street/St. Nicholas Avenue Station, New York, NY
Operator of Vehicle: MTA New York City Transit
Date of Photo: December 23, 2018

There is to be no suggestion that a subway car is somehow a Covid-19 “victim.” However, the retirement of New York City’s oldest subway cars and the oldest subway cars in operation anywhere in the United States came unexpectedly as a result of modified fleet requirements to provide essential service in response to the ongoing pandemic. Due to needing fewer cars to maintain peak service right now and the arrival of the final R179 cars, the R32s were officially retired on April 27, 2020. This photo, which I took in December 2018, was one of the last ones I would ever take of this car type in revenue service.

A total of 600 R32 cars were built and delivered in 1964 and 1965. These cars are actually older than the MTA itself, as New York City Transit was not a part of the former agency until 1968. Over the course of their service lives, these cars operated on just about every B Division (lettered) line at one time or another. In their final years, they could be found on the A, C, J, and Z lines. They outlived the R38, R40, R42, and R44 cars, all of which were built after the R32.

The retirement of the R32 sadly also marks the end of an era on the New York City Subway, as these were the last cars in service to have a true railfan window at the front of each train. I have fond memories of standing at the front of the Redbirds and other New York City subway cars, feeling the dank breeze coming through the storm door and watching the signals and other trackside signage go by. Unfortunately, that is is an experience that can only live on as a memory now.

Rail Photo of the Month: April 2020

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Oren

3200 Series 3274

Location: Quincy/Wells Station, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 9, 2014

As of this writing, the Chicago Transit Authority is the largest transit system in the United States that is still running normal weekday service despite the Covid-19 Health Crisis. Ridership is down 82 percent on CTA trains and about 76 percent on CTA buses according to local news reports. Transit workers are considered essential employees, so despite the “stay at home” order in place in Illinois and many other US states, they are still reporting to work in order to help other essential workers, such as doctors, nurses, paramedics, firemen, and police officers to their jobs. Determining how much service ought to run in light of lower ridership numbers and the desire to maintain social distancing protocols is a challenge that agencies will be wrestling with as this crisis continues. However, regardless of how much service is operated in Chicago or wherever you are, be sure to thank the transit employees and other essential employees for their service, especially in these times (assuming you yourself have essential business, otherwise, please stay home). Being a transit employee is challenging enough in normal circumstances as it is, so your thanks will be even more appreciated now.

For more photos of CTA’s 3200 Series trains, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: April 2020

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Oren

BredaMenarinibus M321 108

Location: Via Torre de Argentina at Largo Argentina, Rome, Italy Operator of Vehicle: ATAC Date of Photo: February 5, 2008

There’s no sugarcoating what is on my mind right now. I spent five months living in the heart of Rome in early 2008. When I picture the streets of Rome, I picture bustling sidewalks and piazzas full of people. The streets are filled with vehicular traffic, and buses go by packed with people to the point you always have to be aware of potential pickpockets. The photos I’ve seen from Italy (among other places) in the world in light of the current Covid-19 health crisis are surreal. I haven’t been on a transit vehicle in two weeks. Who knows when I’ll next take a transit ride. And let’s be honest, that’s a pretty trivial question right now. However, I do hope that as a society, we are able to return to our normal ways of life as soon as it is safe to do so, and that the streets of Rome look more like they did at this time in 2008, pictured here, than they do today. For more photos of Rome’s BredaMenarinibus Buses, please click here.