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Enviro 500

By Enviro 500
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Peter M

Peter M

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Posted

On December 10, 2016 I rode V12024 on route 49 to Metrotown Station. The driver stopped on the up-hill Vivian Ave bus stop. When he started to depart the stop, the bus got stuck under the ice and snow. The driver struggled for about ten minutes, alternating between DRIVE and REVERSE, then, the driver of V12010 who was driving on the opposite direction stopped and turned on the emergency lights and walked over to my bus. He talked with my driver. They (driver of V12010) agreed that my bus driver would have us get off the bus and wait while V12010's driver successfully drove V12024 out of the stop, but ended up scrapping the area around the articulating joint (go figure...) after that, V15019 arrived from behind us and picked up half of the passengers from the bus I was on, but it filled up quickly so the other half of us (including me) ended up boarding V12024 again. I feel bad for the bus driver. : ( Are VTC bus operators trained to drive articulated buses up snowy hills? Because my driver seemed to be having a hard time...

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Express691

Express691

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You have to understand the physics behind it. It's an artic bus. Chris Cassidy and I were talking about this one time. They are TRASH when it comes to snow. You have all that power from the back and it pushes everything forward. Thus, you lose control of some that force in the articulated section. Combine that with sliding middle tires and what you end up with the trailer pushing the slipping middle wheel. 

Also, the co-efficient of friction between the tire and the icy road is something like 0.1 so that effectively increases your braking distance and decreases your ability to control yourself once you start moving.

A possible solution is to have the driving wheel on the middle axle but that should be saved for another time.

I also heard there's literally no market for snow tires on transit buses.

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Dane

Dane

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1 hour ago, Express691 said:

 

I also heard there's literally no market for snow tires on transit buses.

That would make sense, a snow tire would provide very minimal gain given the weight of the vehicle and tire swaps would be time consuming I would think. That said how often are bus tires changed?

 

We run summers on Police cars all year. 355 days a year that's a good plan lol. They're the best in the rain.

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Brando737

Brando737

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13 hours ago, Express691 said:

I got clusterf*cked twice. Once in Richmond where it took us an hour to get to the Massey tunnel and another hour to get to Scott Road Station from 84th. My body isnt in the greatest condition from all the sitting. At around 1645 there were like a dozen 319s backlogged on Scott Road between the station and around 90th avenue. Also saw 7463 doing some sort of special. It had "SPECIAL EXPRESS" on its desto. 

I heard a lot of the HTC routes got jammed 30 minutes down because of the buildup of traffic for the Patullo. 2 friends of mine wanted to just quit their 104s and walk across the bridge.

I did enjoy the short ride on the SFPR though. Last time Ive been down there was summer of 2014.

It was a horrible day all over for HTC routes and the operators.  I know of one operator who stood at Westminster & Boundary EB waiting for his 410 which was 1.5 hours late and took him almost 2 hours to get to 22nd and that was his entire time on that part of the shift.  I heard it took 410s almost 3 hours to get from Steveston to 22nd, brutal.

The bridge closed literally moments before I got onto the hwy from 72nd, they are just starting to set up the cones and traffic wasn't bunched up at that point.  Took me a while to get to HTC the long way around.  Got there a little late for my report time, but was able to depart on time at 1429.  I didn't get over the Queensborough bridge until about 1600.  Usually takes me only 5 minutes to get from depot to other side of the bridge.  Missed my 1500 110 Speaking Stn from Lougheed and missed my 1550 144 from SFU.  I tried to get myself to city hall to pick up passengers, but couldn't make it on time.  I just turned left onto Burris from NB Canada Way to be on time on my 144 at 1630.  Got to metrotown on time, but that on time ended quickly.  Let on time for my 106 and got to New west 30 minutes late, but I recovered some time on the way back to metrotown.  Left only 10 minutes late for my 430 and was able to leave Richmond center on time as I have a longer break, but I still left a few minutes late because I just needed to be out of the seat for more than a few minutes which is all I had left of my long break when I got there.  Finished my day only a few minutes behind at the depot.  Very long and stressful day.

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ConventionalMan

ConventionalMan

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49 minutes ago, Brando737 said:

It was a horrible day all over for HTC routes and the operators.  I know of one operator who stood at Westminster & Boundary EB waiting for his 410 which was 1.5 hours late and took him almost 2 hours to get to 22nd and that was his entire time on that part of the shift.  I heard it took 410s almost 3 hours to get from Steveston to 22nd, brutal.

The bridge closed literally moments before I got onto the hwy from 72nd, they are just starting to set up the cones and traffic wasn't bunched up at that point.  Took me a while to get to HTC the long way around.  Got there a little late for my report time, but was able to depart on time at 1429.  I didn't get over the Queensborough bridge until about 1600.  Usually takes me only 5 minutes to get from depot to other side of the bridge.  Missed my 1500 110 Speaking Stn from Lougheed and missed my 1550 144 from SFU.  I tried to get myself to city hall to pick up passengers, but couldn't make it on time.  I just turned left onto Burris from NB Canada Way to be on time on my 144 at 1630.  Got to metrotown on time, but that on time ended quickly.  Let on time for my 106 and got to New west 30 minutes late, but I recovered some time on the way back to metrotown.  Left only 10 minutes late for my 430 and was able to leave Richmond center on time as I have a longer break, but I still left a few minutes late because I just needed to be out of the seat for more than a few minutes which is all I had left of my long break when I got there.  Finished my day only a few minutes behind at the depot.  Very long and stressful day.

Long and stressful indeed. Someone really needs to look at the whole picture and the ramifications of closing that bridge. I get the inherent dangers of ice falling but it seems so blown out of proportion this year. Maybe it's my imagination.

I was doing a 410 to 22nd and was only -6 when I got to Westminster and Fraserwood. By the time I reached 22nd, I was 2 hours and 40 minutes late. Several people got off and walked from the 91 interchange all the way to the station. Some people couldn't walk, so were forced to wait it out in traffic. One person got off the bus for a smoke break. By the time he was done, I hadn't even moved. Another got off on Ewen, walked the block to the convenience store and got back on 10 min later with his dinner. I hadn't passed the store yet. Apparently they were short-turning buses in Richmond just to get stuck in the mess again. Add to that, the rail arms at Cambie and Shell were stuck for around 2 hours about the same time or a little later and the 410 was a total loss for the afternoon.

It was brutal. Every single alternate route was completely hooped. Someone definitely misjudged the impact of closing it on a weekday afternoon.

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GORDOOM

GORDOOM

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4 minutes ago, ConventionalMan said:

Long and stressful indeed. Someone really needs to look at the whole picture and the ramifications of closing that bridge. I get the inherent dangers of ice falling but it seems so blown out of proportion this year. Maybe it's my imagination.

Trouble is, what happens if the bridge stays open, and then a chunk of ice smashes through someone's windshield?

What they need to do, as part of the plan for a closure like that, is have a better plan for prioritizing transit vehicles through the congestion. Make the cars carrying one person each sit around and wait.

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ConventionalMan

ConventionalMan

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1 hour ago, GORDOOM said:

Trouble is, what happens if the bridge stays open, and then a chunk of ice smashes through someone's windshield?

What they need to do, as part of the plan for a closure like that, is have a better plan for prioritizing transit vehicles through the congestion. Make the cars carrying one person each sit around and wait.

That's what I mean by the dangers. I understand their caution but there has to be a better way than COMPLETELY closing the bridge. Prioritizing transit is great in theory but in fact NO one was going ANYwhere. There aren't enough lanes to move all that traffic in a different direction. Bus lanes would be awesome but where would you put them? Reducing an already crowded highway to less lanes to open one for buses seems to me like it would make things worse.How can it be done efficiently? It's a tough problem.

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Brando737

Brando737

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22 minutes ago, ConventionalMan said:

That's what I mean by the dangers. I understand their caution but there has to be a better way than COMPLETELY closing the bridge. Prioritizing transit is great in theory but in fact NO one was going ANYwhere. There aren't enough lanes to move all that traffic in a different direction. Bus lanes would be awesome but where would you put them? Reducing an already crowded highway to less lanes to open one for buses seems to me like it would make things worse.How can it be done efficiently? It's a tough problem.

I have to agree with you.  We need our own Queensborough bridge lol.  But the issue with bus lanes is that when traffic gets nasty like this, people get impatient and use the bus lane anyways then it gets clogged up anyways.  

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Large Cat

Large Cat

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Can confirm yesterday sucked with the bridge closed. Scott Road station had probably a thousand people waiting for buses that got caught in the EB Patullo bound traffic. Luckily it was a pleasure trip (640 to go visit Four Winds), so after 45 minutes we could just opt to visit the breweries on the Evergreen Line instead. :)

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MCW Metrobus

MCW Metrobus

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2 hours ago, TimmyC62 said:

A friend spotted two buses with DDR Vehicle on their destination signs this morning (Wednesday Dec 14) around Powell St.

 

Anyone know what the "disaster" they were responding to? 

Tim Horton's ran out of coffee. Those buses were doing an express run to Starbucks.

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Marlow1331

Marlow1331

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Not sure if this is the appropriate forum but I thought I'd mention that there will be a big meeting today (finally) between management and the union about how operators are getting hardcore redeemed out for being late, some of us, have been getting suspended, (a few have earned our suspension by not caring, thanks to T-Comm Supervisors lack of respec), due to not being able to get HTC , or out of HTC to our runs. This is really a crappy situation 

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Express691

Express691

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2 minutes ago, Marlow1331 said:

Not sure if this is the appropriate forum but I thought I'd mention that there will be a big meeting today (finally) between management and the union about how operators are getting hardcore redeemed out for being late, some of us, have been getting suspended, (a few have earned our suspension by not caring, thanks to T-Comm Supervisors lack of respec), due to not being able to get HTC , or out of HTC to our runs. This is really a crappy situation 

Heard this one block on the 410 that does C98 kept getting cancelled over and over again for whatever reason. HTC was fcked over snow, Bridge closures, and PCTs situation all within the past week.

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GORDOOM

GORDOOM

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39 minutes ago, ThatBusGuy said:

Spotted a bunch of Internationals parked in the shuttle lot near Bridgeport

That's a private company, not TransLink, right?

Those cutaways are AIUI pretty good for shuttle-type runs, just not the kind of stop-and-go operations that TransLink uses them for. So I wouldn't be surprised if TransLink found a buyer or buyers, given how new they are.

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dover5949

dover5949

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Posted

Railway crossing arms stuck in down position on both sides of tracks at Renfrew & East 12th Ave. Several 016's stuck on both sides of tracks for some time earlier. Afterwards seen a few on the south side back up to Grandview Hwy & then head West on Grandview Hwy to Nanaimo on Aux then north on the overhead then auxiliary left turn onto East Broadway. Currently all 016's are terminating at Boundary Loop & no service to 29th Ave. Stn. Don't understand why Tcomm is not routing them around the problem using by using east 12th Kaslo & Grandview Hwy then Reg route?

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