[OT] Public Transit

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 11:18:55AM -0400, James Knott wrote:
> You can thank the various local/provincial/state governments for that  
> one.  Years ago, GM pretty much owned the local transit bus market and  
> produced an excellent product.  Then the governments seemed to think  
> they could do better, provide local jobs etc., which resulted in a  
> fragmented bus industry, in which few do well.

Well I have a hard time believing GM made an excellent product, but I
guess at some point in time (long ago) they probably did.  Of course
given how they have done since they would probably have been making the
same model still if no one had been competing with them.

Now certainly the Orion and New Flyer busses don't exactly seem great
(not sure who else around here makes busses now), although they do seem
to have gotten better lately.

York Region of course bought busses from Europe (Belgium I believe)
when they wanted express route busses (The very nice VIVA system).
Perhaps the local companies could look at them and learn something about
designing a modern city bus.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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