BusTalk

[Q65A]

En route to a meeting in Lower Manhattan this morning, I had the opportunity to ride the S61 to St. George Ferry. Technology really has evolved at NYCT. I have the MTA Bus Time app loaded on my iPhone. Programmed to the bus stop (in this case, Victory Blvd. & Slosson Ave.) and the applicable routes (S61, S62 and S66), I was able to find out where various buses happened to be located, where they were terminating and what would be their next stops. I boarded NYCT 8266, a 2015 Nova Bus LFS 40102. I've only been aboard modern Nova Buses 3 times: once at a Vintage Bus Festival and (including today) twice on LFS's operated out of Yukon Depot. The BO sits behind a hinged door equipped with a Plexiglas partition window. Looking around at the interior, all grab bars were painted bright yellow instead of natural stainless steel. Every vertical bar had a stop button, and there were no more touch tapes to signal an intended stop: the old pull cable (also bright yellow) was strung along the window lines. When the exit door was authorized by the BO, a voice annunciator proclaimed "Exit door open" to passengers waiting to alight. One thing that struck me as odd was the first passenger seat, directly behind the operator': it is a single seat, elevated on a platform, facing the front door. To the immediate right of this seat was a floor-to-ceiling equipment cabinet over the left front wheel housing. I always thought the LFS was a bit "long in the nose", and this ride confirmed that the front overhang is pretty considerable as compared to other modern transit buses. That one piece windshield is huge, and the 2 opposed wipers park directly above each other, out of the BO's line of sight. As a bona fide old timer raised on the chant of 2-stroke Detroit Diesels, the sound of a straight 6 Cummins out back still seems a bit strange. Most of my riding experience with Nova Bus products had been aboard RTS-06's, and, just as recent Buick TV ads would proclaim, "My grandpa used to drive a Buick", today's LFS is not your grandpa's Nova Bus, either.
One question I would like to ask of the BO's and maintainers on this board: which buses do you prefer, and why?