Daz's campaign to promote mass transit (City Bus Stop freebie)

tj_1ca9500b · July 2017

jakiblue said:

LOL Same here. No buses in my town. No taxis either. Nor do we have traffic lights. There are two pedestrian crossings...but that's it.

Charlie Judge said:

We don't have any bus stops here because, quite simply, there are no busses.

Sounds like you are in the middle of nowhere... We have a few towns like that fairly close to where I live (town is probably a generous word), but unfortunately I'm in the middle of a population cluster of several million people.

50 years ago), the city I'm in had only 8 streets (4 NS, 4 EW), and around 2000 people. And yeah, no traffic lights. We are about 1500% larger than that now, with over a hundred miles of streets contained in the same area. I believe the operative word is sprawl...

I miss the farms. There are still a couple left, but yeah we are a bedroom community now.

kyoto kid · July 2017

...I saw a posting on the old Car render thread a while back where someone converted a GMC "Fishbowl" transit bus from a GTA model. Looked really good but again I don't have the modelling and texturing expertise as well as the software tools to do that myself.

Haslor · July 2017

I want one of these:

Cybersox · July 2017

Zylox said:

There is a bus at the other major store. Search for E.M.T. Bus. One thing I noticed on the Nimos transit bus is that there is no wheelchair access. A good DAZ Studio bus with a wheelchair lift and perhaps a bike rack would be very nice. If it included morphs/versions for right and left driving and both American and European license plates, it would be even better.

I am in a similar situation to Kyoto Kid, I need access to a good bus route, otherwise I would rather live in a small town or the country rather than a large city. Alright, Eugene isn't that large a city, but it's large enough considering I grew up in a town of 301.

The EMT bus is a European model and, like the double decker, is something that you're unlikely to find being used as a mass transit vehicle in the U.S. Primarily because it's just too small and flimsy for the kind of damage that a major city buses encounter here, as city buses have to be massive enough that if they're in an accident, that they come out for the better in any exchange of inertia since they don't have seat restraints. I was in the back of a commuter bus once when a car swerved in front of it and those of us in the back didn't even know we'd been in an accident until the driver pulled over to the side. Meanwhile, the back of the other vehicle was literally flattened. Sometimes bigger is better...

kyoto kid · July 2017

...foreign built buses were not an unusual sight in US city streets particularly from the 80s early to 2000s as GMC, AM General, and later Grumman-Flexible stopped building buses here in the US

Portland's Tri Met bought a number of Crown Ikarius bending buses but retired them after about a decade because they just were not as durable as well as being underpowered for the many hills we have. My old hometown of Milwaukee WI also operated Ikarius as well during the 1980s - 90s

Seattle chose M.A.N. of Germany for their bending bus fleet (some which were dual power Diesel/Trolley) as well as single body buses and still operates a number of them

Milwaukee also had a fairly large fleet of German built Neoplan single body buses in the 1980s/90s.

It wasn't just durability, all Eurpoean imports at the time were high floor designs that did not comply with the then new ADA accessibility rules which ended up requiring the addition of lifts to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs and other mobility devices. Lift operations frequently resulted schedule delays as well as being prone to failure and a maintenance nightmare. On the Ikarius articulated bus, the lift was at the middle, not the front door which required the driver to leave his seat to cycle the lift requiring even more time The GMC RTS series,( the last transit bus the company built), also had the lift at the rear door.

In the early 90s, New Flyer of Canada introduced the first low floor transit bus which solved this issue using a simple fold out ramp that took only seconds to deploy allowing wheelchair bound passengers to roll right on board as quick as anyone else. Within a few years these buses became the mainstay of many transit systems nation wide. Gillig, a competitor in California, also offers a low floor single body model which is a bit longer than the New Flyer 40' with an improved seating arrangement that accommodates more seated passengers. These buses are also very solidly built, reminding me of the old GMs and Flexibles I used to ride on decades ago. Portland's Tri Met has a standing contract with Gillig and is in the midst of an aggressive fleet modernisation programme having not just retired the last high floor buses, but also the first New Flyer low floor buses it acquired in the 90s that are nearing 20 years old.