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"Of course, this bus doesn't have air conditioning. That's what MAX is for."
Umm, all buses purchased since 1997 have had air conditioning. And while the original MAX cars were retrofitted with A/C, they were and are expected to last a lot longer than the buses. Specifically, in the budget TriMet gives a LRV service life of 40 years, and the cars were only about 11 years old at the time.
"Umm, all buses purchased since 1997 have had air conditioning"
Which is nice and all, but the buses purchased prior to that (which make up the bulk of runs on the west side) do not. Such as the 1700 in the picture that was my ride home yesterday.
I realize there are still many non air-conditioned buses. However, that is a result of buses not getting replaced. Not because of a belief that only MAX should have air conditioning. If the buses were newer, they would have air conditioning.
I think that's too literal an interpretation of what Erik wrote. I read his comment and assumed the intended meaning was "TriMet is prioritizing MAX over bus replacement" not "only MAX should have A/C"
One other thing: TriMet only added A/C to the 26 original MAX vehicles. Even if that's considered an equivalent of 52 buses (since I think MAX cars might have an A/C system for each half), there were a lot more buses at the time without A/C, and making the bus fleet all-A/C equipped would have been much more expensive.
Its that the MAX cars were and are expected to last a lot longer than the buses, meaning that they will get more use out of the added A/C units. The economy was going good at the time and I'm pretty sure they thought they wouldn't have a problem affording bus replacement, but then the economy tanked twice and fuel prices shot up.
Or, to put it another way, if the economy had kept going and they were able to replace buses in a timely manner, probably all buses would in fact be ones with A/C by now. But the original MAX cars would still be running.
And that it may have been cheaper (measured on a per passenger basis) to add A/C to the MAX cars.
In addition, with the original cars always being combined with a newer one, they would have half a train with A/C and half without.
Overall, I don't know what their actual rationale was for adding A/C to the MAX cars but not the buses. You'd really have to ask to find out.
And even one more thing: unlike most buses, the MAX cars had poor ventilation, with only the top part of the windows openable. And I'm not sure that adding better windows would have been realistic (e.g. safe).
8 comments:
Time to make up some new stickers:
"Of course, this bus doesn't have air conditioning. That's what MAX is for."
"Of course, this bus doesn't have air conditioning. That's what MAX is for."
Umm, all buses purchased since 1997 have had air conditioning. And while the original MAX cars were retrofitted with A/C, they were and are expected to last a lot longer than the buses. Specifically, in the budget TriMet gives a LRV service life of 40 years, and the cars were only about 11 years old at the time.
"Umm, all buses purchased since 1997 have had air conditioning"
Which is nice and all, but the buses purchased prior to that (which make up the bulk of runs on the west side) do not. Such as the 1700 in the picture that was my ride home yesterday.
I realize there are still many non air-conditioned buses. However, that is a result of buses not getting replaced. Not because of a belief that only MAX should have air conditioning. If the buses were newer, they would have air conditioning.
I think that's too literal an interpretation of what Erik wrote. I read his comment and assumed the intended meaning was "TriMet is prioritizing MAX over bus replacement" not "only MAX should have A/C"
One other thing: TriMet only added A/C to the 26 original MAX vehicles. Even if that's considered an equivalent of 52 buses (since I think MAX cars might have an A/C system for each half), there were a lot more buses at the time without A/C, and making the bus fleet all-A/C equipped would have been much more expensive.
Its that the MAX cars were and are expected to last a lot longer than the buses, meaning that they will get more use out of the added A/C units. The economy was going good at the time and I'm pretty sure they thought they wouldn't have a problem affording bus replacement, but then the economy tanked twice and fuel prices shot up.
Or, to put it another way, if the economy had kept going and they were able to replace buses in a timely manner, probably all buses would in fact be ones with A/C by now. But the original MAX cars would still be running.
And that it may have been cheaper (measured on a per passenger basis) to add A/C to the MAX cars.
In addition, with the original cars always being combined with a newer one, they would have half a train with A/C and half without.
Overall, I don't know what their actual rationale was for adding A/C to the MAX cars but not the buses. You'd really have to ask to find out.
And even one more thing: unlike most buses, the MAX cars had poor ventilation, with only the top part of the windows openable. And I'm not sure that adding better windows would have been realistic (e.g. safe).
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