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| Re: PHOTOS: A Tribute to Valley Metro's soon to be gone routes/buses (130458) | |||
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Re: PHOTOS: A Tribute to Valley Metro's soon to be gone routes/buses |
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Posted by roscoman1986 on Mon Dec 29 23:34:28 2008, in response to PHOTOS: A Tribute to Valley Metro's soon to be gone routes/buses, posted by phxtusbusfan on Thu Dec 25 13:22:09 2008. Nice pics!1. The nicest thing about the Red Line was the fact that it was operated by Phoenix on weekdays and Tempe on weekends. I will miss seeing and riding the D60LFs in Tempe, especially the 2008 D60LFs that probably won't spend much time in Tempe (save for a substitution on route 44). I would guess the 2007 D60LFs will never go back to Tempe except for special moves and if First Transit decides to take over the route 44. As for the opposite (Tempe buses in Phoenix), that will definitely be missed. Although they were not that nice inside, the soft seats of the 35-LFWs and 40-LFWs 6378-6381 were a nice contrast to the Phoenix NABI hard seaters, and not to mention seeing and riding Tempe buses far away from Tempe itself. Too bad I only saw an E-Z Rider on the Red Line once back in 2001-2002 (and it was in Tempe) and apparently an operator said that a Tempe 45C-LFW ran the Red Line at least once. 2. The Blue Line was the route that I took from home to high school and back for nearly three years. My typical morning trip would be on a 1998 NABI 40-LFW from the South Division and during my freshman and sophomore years me and some friends always got the same bus every morning and had some fun memories and discussions. The trip home was run by North Division, running an RTS or 1996 D40LF (during my freshman year summer I got to ride on a 1994 D40LF but that didn't last very long). I remember the buses were always packed with students from Brophy and Xavier, who actually were pretty well-behaved (except during my freshman year summer I don't remember anyone getting kicked off the bus, and they didn't tag it up like other high school students). This route was the most crowded (especially with Xavier students) because so many lived over in Scottsdale. I met some nice people on this bus, some of which I keep in contact with to this day. Ironically, I didn't like the RTS or 1996 D40LFs at the time because it was the same bus type every day and they were "older" than the NABIs (despite the fact that the RTS and 1996 D40LFs are gone now and they both had soft seats). I remember wanting to have artics running on this particular trip. Turns out this was before I found out about North and South Division and the fact that North Division has no artics at all! 3. I didn't really start riding the 1994 D40LFs until I moved down to Tempe. Prior to that, I rode them during my high school summer on the Blue Line (they were the second bus type I ever took in Phoenix) back when they were based at the South Division. That didn't last very long once the 2002 NABIs came in and the buses were moved to Phoenix-West (Laidlaw at the time) and the RPTA. Sometimes, I would try to take the route 0-Central to Sunnyslope and take the 106 to PV Mall as an "experiment" to try to bypass the crowded afternoon Blue Line, which was also always late. As a result, I had a chance to ride on the 1994 D40LFs when Laidlaw ran them (and I also was lucky enough to catch a 1989 35-foot RTS but not a 35-foot Gillig unfortunately). In addition, I wanted to ride on 4071 because it had the same type of seating installed on the 2004 D60LFs as an experiment (hard seats). I remember the Laidlaw 1994 D40LFs were not in that great of shape, but I don't know if that was due to Phoenix-South or Laidlaw itself (considering that the Laidlaw routes except for the 59 and 67 did not necessarily pass through that bad of areas at the time). As for the RPTA D40LFs, I rode them once or twice in high school but not much otherwise. After I moved to Tempe to attend ASU, during my freshman year I rode a lot of RPTA D40LFs (although I tried to catch the Gilligs first and foremost). I remember that when the higher-numbered (4024-4039) D40LFs were first transferred to the RPTA in 2001 and 2002, some of them had ads and at least one (4029) had a wrap left on. In addition, 4021 had an interior ad on it as late as 2005-2006, long after it left Phoenix (unless the RPTA allowed advertising at one time). What is interesting is I don't know who ran the 1994 D40LFs with the RPTA into the ground: Phoenix or the RPTA? I would guess Phoenix because the rest of the RPTA buses are in pretty good shape (save for the mismatched seating). The soft seats were quite nice on these buses, however. 4. I have already discussed some memories about the 1996 D40LFs in my "Blue Line" paragraph. I didn't really get a chance to ride them when they were with Laidlaw/First Transit with the exception of a single trip on Route 13-Buckeye (with the mismatched seating, of course). These buses have been run into the ground at least twice in my opinion. The first time was with Phoenix-North, and the second time was when Veolia-Phoenix and First Transit switched routes. One thing that was interesting about the 1996 (and probably 1994 as well) D40LFs was that the rear side windows used to be covered by mesh to prevent tagging. The problem with this was that it made the bus look like a dungeon inside, and back when the D40LFs were wrapped it made it much worse. At least the interior lights on the 1996 D40LFs were slightly brighter than the 1994 D40LFs, and the soft seats were nice (until they became mismatched). Of course there was the L40LF 3727, which I only had a chance to ride once (on route 72 northbound). It was odd riding a 1996 bus on an RPTA route as it was brighter than the 1994 D40LFs. Too bad that one-of-a-kind bus is history now. |
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