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Re: Doubledeckers in LA and "unsafe" Artics....?
Author: BOB2
Date: 07-14-2018 - 13:31
Max,
It wasn't really about "safety". The unions were fighting the increased productivity to supposedly "protect" their members "jobs". The safety nonsense was the pretext they used, because artics are so "big", and they even "scarier", they turn in the middle, so "who knows" "what" "might" happen....
And, oh business people, by the way, these "unsafe" artics will also take up too much space at the bus stops, and "evil" bureaucratic toadies will "steal" your customer street parking for longer bus stops...
This is essentially same kind of nonsense fearmongering that Nimby's and others use to frighten the simple minded fringes and the bloviating politicians (often one and the same...) with lurid tales of looming disaster and woe, from almost any change imaginable, so we just shouldn't do it....
The "safety" of artics and even the double-deckers was good old fashioned "hogwash" for the purposes of good old fashioned "agitprop". And, since the SCRTD management had put the double-deckers into storage over this "ginned up" "hogwash", I would have to say that line of bs did work...at least for a while.
We were running 20 year old 35 foot Flyers on many routes at that time (1984). We ran "shorty's" with standing room only, on the Pasadena Freeway at the time, (later replaced with packed Gold Line service) because they were "small" enough for LA's oldest Freeway, for pretty dubious "safety" reasoning, too. This was because trucks were banned on this freeway (originally because of the low bridge clearances....).
We have ended up using very few artics in LA, even for the volumes we carry on some of these bus routes. And, after bringing the double deckers back into service for the Olympics, we dumped them (IIRC these double-deckers were made by "evil" foreign manufacturer, unlike our piece of crap "buy America" selection of U.S, made buses eligible for Federal funding back then)
Now, enough of the buses, already. I'll take the Gold Line over a bus any day.
It wasn't really about "safety". The unions were fighting the increased productivity to supposedly "protect" their members "jobs". The safety nonsense was the pretext they used, because artics are so "big", and they even "scarier", they turn in the middle, so "who knows" "what" "might" happen....
And, oh business people, by the way, these "unsafe" artics will also take up too much space at the bus stops, and "evil" bureaucratic toadies will "steal" your customer street parking for longer bus stops...
This is essentially same kind of nonsense fearmongering that Nimby's and others use to frighten the simple minded fringes and the bloviating politicians (often one and the same...) with lurid tales of looming disaster and woe, from almost any change imaginable, so we just shouldn't do it....
The "safety" of artics and even the double-deckers was good old fashioned "hogwash" for the purposes of good old fashioned "agitprop". And, since the SCRTD management had put the double-deckers into storage over this "ginned up" "hogwash", I would have to say that line of bs did work...at least for a while.
We were running 20 year old 35 foot Flyers on many routes at that time (1984). We ran "shorty's" with standing room only, on the Pasadena Freeway at the time, (later replaced with packed Gold Line service) because they were "small" enough for LA's oldest Freeway, for pretty dubious "safety" reasoning, too. This was because trucks were banned on this freeway (originally because of the low bridge clearances....).
We have ended up using very few artics in LA, even for the volumes we carry on some of these bus routes. And, after bringing the double deckers back into service for the Olympics, we dumped them (IIRC these double-deckers were made by "evil" foreign manufacturer, unlike our piece of crap "buy America" selection of U.S, made buses eligible for Federal funding back then)
Now, enough of the buses, already. I'll take the Gold Line over a bus any day.
