Today I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see an exhibition of Civil War Photographs. From half a block from Penn Station on 7th Avenue in front of St. Francis Church I caught the M4 MTA bus to 83rd St. The MTA runs low floor buses. I like them a lot better than the high floor models New Jersey Transit uses.
NJT will not change to low floors because high floor buses have more seats. It is true; low floors leave no room for seats at all over the front wheels. They do have a raised section over the back wheels with seats but the front wheels must use up the space of 6 or 8 seats. And NJT buses frequently have standing room only. So there is a reason for what they do.
For all of that I prefer low floors.
LION has considered this after riding one of those beese with the wheels taking up half of the forward passenger compartment.
LION *does* have a solution to have low beese, and more capacity without those wheel wells. The problem, of course is the wheels. They are too big! You really do not need BIG WHEELS, you need wheels that can carry the weight and can stand up to city streets.
SOLUTION: Use smaller wheels. Instead of a pair of big wheels, use bogies forward with four or maybe eight smaller wheels. Passenger car wheels would be small enough.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
BroadwayLionSOLUTION: Use smaller wheels. Instead of a pair of big wheels, use bogies forward with four or maybe eight smaller wheels. Passenger car wheels would be small enough.
You mean bogies of the type that are commonly used with flanged steel wheels that run on steel tracks? What an outrageously efficient way to move people around. Only in wild places like North Dakota could you find a person who would be interested in such a ridiculously simple and straightforward way to solve a problem.
Smaller wheels won't necessarily solve the problem. You still have to have room for the engines and drive shaft. Also, four wheels arranged as a bogie adds complexity to the steering system.
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv has M/A.N. low-floors with smaller than regular wheels but still larger than auto wheels, and back-to-back seats with a slight step over the wheels, so no capacity is lost. Works well, except that on rough roads and speed bumps the suspension bottoms out, and doesn't handle these jars as well as the old Mercedes high-floors. Both articulated and four wheel types. Both and both.
Another solution is to use buses that "kneel" for passengers who have difficulty stepping up from the curb or street to the first step.
Johnny
CSSHEGEWISCHSmaller wheels won't necessarily solve the problem. You still have to have room for the engines and drive shaft. Also, four wheels arranged as a bogie adds complexity to the steering system.
The engines are in the back of the bus, and I have never seen the drive shaft to be a problem. With hydrolic and servo controls, steering is no issue. Remember these beese operate over city streets and so uneven terrain is not an issue.
Many commuter beese are made here in North Dakota.
To say nothing of the quality of the steering integrity! I suspect even if the 'rear' axle of the bogie were made like a tag axle, you'd still need to steer the wheels relative to the bogie frame.
However, many of the existing ELF (extremely low floor) buses will not particularly benefit from the idea, as their floor is already lower between the front wheels than a swiveling bogie could permit, and the bogie almost by definition would have a longer effective wheelbase relative to the door location -- so you'd have even MORE NovaBus-like overhang, You'd almost be better off mounting the 'multiple' small front tires as duals, giving the outboard ones separate bearings so they could turn at different rates -- you'd still have scrubbing on turns, but much less required length or height to wheel-well arches. (And on a kneeling bus that could accommodate the bogie without arches, lower needed overhang beyond the steering 'axis'...)
Most existing ELF buses that use mechanical drive to a transaxle have the 'raised platform' in the rear. This sometimes just clears the mechanical parts; there are still wheel arches hiding, sometimes under a pair of lengthwise seats.
A few of the recent transmission setups and powered-wheel systems could provide true ELF in the aisle front-to-back (excepting only the space needed for a rear-mounted transverse engine). Unsprung mass is less of a concern on a transit bus, particularly one that only needs restricted speed. For some idea of the technology involved in low-floor, see this link from ZF regarding axle and transmission requirements.
Perhaps the 'ultimate' I've seen in ELF buses was made by a company whose name I do not now recall, but ISTR it was one of the ambulance companies. This consisted of the front half of a 4x4 van (like a Quigley) with nothing but the forward shaft from the transfer case to the front axle for drive, grafted onto a rather large box body suspended on a couple of swing arms in the extreme sides of the body, without any sort of drive. This left the entire floor between the wheels as low as general clearance would permit. I cannot imagine its handling was to 'ultimate driving machine' standards, but it seemed to get the job done, and with comparatively simple and OTS components for the expensive systems...
BroadwayLion Remember these beese operate over city streets and so uneven terrain is not an issue.
Remember these beese operate over city streets and so uneven terrain is not an issue.
LOL... that is too funny!
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
daveklepperJerusalem and Tel Aviv has M/A.N. low-floors with smaller than regular wheels but still larger than auto wheels, and back-to-back seats with a slight step over the wheels, so no capacity is lost.
Interesting, Dave. So low floor buses can be made without loosing seats. New Jersey Transit never mentioned that option. Never ever. But then silence on certain issues is a characteristic of our transit authority.
John
I think MAN has a website and you might get some pix. One of their transit bus options is a low-floor artic with one wide entrance door and three exist doors for a total of four double-doors. The extra doors do loose seats, of course.
daveklepperI think MAN has a website and you might get some pix
You could get started here, which has a couple of downloadable images. I have not yet found specific discussion of their low-floor approaches, simply because I don't have time this morning -- I invite anyone else to mouse around and find the detail.
daveklepperOne of their transit bus options is a low-floor artic with one wide entrance door and three exist doors for a total of four double-doors. The extra doors do loose seats, of course.
I looked at the city buses on the MAN website. They all have 2 doors. It seems to me 4 doors would take up most of one side of a transit bus.
The more I think of it the more I like the low floor bus rather than the traditional one. NJT uses a NABI (North American Bus Industries) model with 3 steps. The bus itself has a big boxy interior which I like. But a low floor would be easier for a lot of people and probably save a little time too.
BroadwayLion: Remember these beese operate over city streets and so uneven terrain is not an issue.
The man who wrote that obviously doesn't get into the big city very often. He must live in a place like, well, North Dakota. With equal naiveté, I will suggest that potholes must not exist out there on the prairies.
NY/NJ Mike
I often use Egged's 68 or 4Aleph routes between my apartment and where I study, and the usual bus is a four-door MAN articulated ("Euro 5"), and yes about 30% of the right side of the bus is door area! But I am not repsonsible for bus purchasing. There are two doors forward of the articulaton joint, one of course right at the front, and two behind the articulation joint. The route was very very rough with lots of potholes, and the suspension bottoming often enough to jar the mollars. But praise the Eternal the road has just been repaved so I now have a smooth ride. But the way the interchange station with the Light Rail is laid out I cross the tracks on these routes three times both in the morning and in the evening! Sometimes the bus breezes through wihout connecting passengers and with green lights in three minutes, other times it takes ten minutes. I often use Light Rail, usually via connecting bus, to go downtown, and the ride is very very smooth in comparison with any local bus.
New Jersey Transit runs a few articulated buses in Newark and I ride them occasionally. They have two doors. Since there is a problem with people getting on at the back door and not paying a fare I doubt NJT would consider adding doors.
I dont get why you need handicapped equiped buses when the Handicapped get picked up at there front door by there own fleet of Handivans. Its not fair I dont get door to door service and I cant ride the Handivans. Its like they get special treatment or something.
BonasI dont get why you need handicapped equiped buses when the Handicapped get picked up at there front door by there own fleet of Handivans. Its not fair I dont get door to door service and I cant ride the Handivans. Its like they get special treatment or something.
In New Jersey, Bonas, all transit buses are equipped with wheel chair lifts and people definitely use them. It is common to see a person in a wheel chair aboard a bus and the bus stop so a person in a wheel chair can board or alight. To my mind people who can get to the bus stop are best served by regular buses on bus routes.
We also have "access link," a van service for people who say they cannot use a regular bus. "Access link" shadows bus routes; to use it a person must live within a certain distance of a regular route; I think about half a mile. I have people who ride access link complain because for pick up there is a half hour window; if a person needs a bus to pick him or her up by 10:00 am for a doctor appointment at 10:30 the bus will come any time between 9:30 and 10 and the person must be ready at 9:30. Some find this inconvenient but that is the way the system works.
As far as fairness goes, just like the rest of us I suppose not all people with disabilities have exactly the same ability so some may need the vans.
Towns also operate buses for senior citizens and the disabled. You have to make an appointment for a pick up and they will take you to the doctor, the supermarket or places like that. They are popular.
If I were in charge of public transit I would not want to leave anyone shut in. But I would encourage people to ride the regular bus system rather than special buses.
Seattle Metro Transit has replaced a lot of their fleet with low floor buses. The wheelchair ramps were a pain in the butt and cost more time to operate and get unstuck or unjammed (sometimes requiring a supervisor or a mechanic with a remote control override box to fuss around with the lift controls) than the low floor flip lifts of today. Also there is very little risk of a wheelchair user falling off the lift since it is now a ramp close to the ground. As far as seating goes, I had a look at Gilig and New Flyer low floor bus interior photos and the best I can tell is the transit agency loses 4 seats maybe 6. Community transit also had low floor buses in use before Metro did. There were also some old 1990's MAN coaches that were style as a kind of low floor coach as well. So the agency that you guys talked about earlier in the thread has got it's head in the sand as far as their fleet goes. Low floor is the trend now. (I have also been to Belgium and the bus agency in the area close to Antwerp uses low floor buses as well) Low floor is easy for people on crutches or using walkers or seniors with bad knees and moms with strollers to get on and off the bus easier and faster and does not require the drive to get out of their seat or have to fight with a snowed in lift or a lift that does not want to stow or unstow properly in the track under the front door or gets stuck in the high position inside the bus. I saw plenty of that with the old buses in Seattle.
In Ontario and probably the rest of Canada low floor bus purchases have been mandatory for over a decade and most transit systems have now phased out all their high floor buses. They also kneel and have flip-out ramps. Yes, you do loose seating over the front wheels, the back of the bus is usually high floor. Even Ottawa's new double decker buses are low floor and provide lots of seating upstairs.
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