Official Bus thread

[jwhite07]

Hundreds of MBTA Buses To Get Bike Racks

Can ya get fire insurance for your bike?

Seriously, bike racks on buses aren't a new concept for the T. The dozen RTS buses that had been exclusively assigned to and painted for the Crosstown routes have them. I never saw them being used...

[MBTA1]

[quote]What are the maintanence crews doing? What is the T doing?[/quote]
[quote]Hundreds of MBTA Buses To Get Bike Racks [/quote]

That answers my question!

[RailBus63]

Bike racks are common on many systems - I'm surprised it took the MBTA this long to catch up.

RIPTA has had them since the mid-1990's at least - even their old soon-to-be-retired Volvo buses had them.

JD

[aline1969]

hate to say it... who cares about bike racks... we need more service and better service. A bike has two wheels

[octr202]

Yes, but...

The racks are pretty cheap. IIRC (from something I saw a few years back) as low as $900* a rack (although I'm sure any MBTA grade rack will be much higher!.

The money is largely coming from federal grants, so a lot of its not the T's money anyway.

Its a good service for some of the T's riders that's pretty easy to do.

*Edit: Re-read the press release, its 300 racks at $255,000, or $850/rack. A steal at twice the price!

[AznSumtinSumtin]

Is it just Charlestown/Bennett getting the racks or will Fellsway be getting them too?

Does anyone think bike racks these days are a bit too expensive? I could get some steel tubing and weld them together and call it a bike rack and sell it for just 300 bucks.

[MBTA1]

Is Seashore going to get any buses from the 84,85,86,87,88, or 8900 RTS bus series?

[aline1969]

We are after 8903 but Tom can not get any cooperation from the people at the T who are in charge of bus operations. We do badly want an 8900.

[MBTA1]

No earlier buses though?

[aline1969]

Tom has already represented the GMC RTS era with the 35 footers from Cape Ann, and he wants to represent the cushion seat era of the T with an 8900 series bus.

[NRGeep]

More than occasionally bus drivers do not stop at the curb and just stop in the middle of the street sometimes many feet shy of the bus stop. What gives? Just got back from Chicago where the buses ALWAYS stop at the curb where the bus stop is.

[MBTA1]

Most of the time ignorant motorists decide to park in the bus stops.

[NRGeep]

True, but that wasn't the case today.

[RailBus63]

Buses should always pull into a stop, but I'm not going to bash drivers in every instance that they fail to do so. Anyone who has driven a transit bus knows they typically have slow acceleration and nobody gives you a break and lets you back into traffic. If the driver was behind schedule, I can understand why he or she might decide to make a quick stop and avoid falling further behind schedule.

That said, drivers who never pull into stops should be disciplined.

JD

[aline1969]

I don't mind if buses don't pull in, we all loaded streetcars in the street...why not buses, besides like mentioned.... autos keep coming and the bus runs behind and people are late for work.