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oh wow, i hadn't even noticed that it was a three axle i've been making this argument on skepticism that a two axle bus should have been on that bridge. the s

oh wow, i hadn't even noticed that it was a three axle i've been making this argument on skepticism that a two axle bus should have been on that bridge. the standard patransit two axle fleet bus, a cummins isl (which is more than half their fleet) is 2 tons shy of max load when empty, and average american weight breaks load at bus half full. that's the 61b. when i lived in pittsburgh it was often packed to the gills. i have a hard time imagining that that has changed. you're right. if it was a 3 axle, that's very significant. hell, an empty three axle (i think they use man sg 220 gawr, which is ~30 tons curb weight) would likely be too much. i'm glad you pointed this out; thank you.

steveklabnik 5y ago
> i have a hard time imagining that that has changed. Fun trivia, https://www.portauthority.org/system-map/ https://www.portauthority.org/system-map/ shows stats on this. It doesn't support deep linking, but I went to the outbound stop just after the bridge, and it says In FY2021: Average Weekday Ons: 0.32 Average Weekday Offs: 5.1 Pre-pandemic ridership for CY2019: Average Weekday Ons: 1.00 Average Weekday Offs: 37.00 It has dropped by quite a bit since the pandemic. The 61A has a daily ridership of 1,643 and the 61B has 1,312.
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  those are indeed much lower numbers than i had expected that said, the other person pointing out that it's a three axle bus makes me relatively confident that the fleet contains no domain-relevant busses that had any business going over that bridge in the first place it's worth noting that when i was growing up, patransit tried to send heavy construction trucks across the larimer bridge. one of the crew members stopped them at the last minute when they saw the bridge and called it in (this is way before pocket internet,) and good thing - basically this would have happened, and in that case, it's a probably five or so story drop onto an active highway. would have been a catastrophe.

steveklabnik 5y ago

> i have a hard time imagining that that has changed. Fun trivia, https://www.portauthority.org/system-map/ https://www.portauthority.org/system-map/ shows stats on this. It doesn't support deep linking, but I went to the outbound stop just after the bridge, and it says In FY2021: Average Weekday Ons: 0.32 Average Weekday Offs: 5.1 Pre-pandemic ridership for CY2019: Average Weekday Ons: 1.00 Average Weekday Offs: 37.00 It has dropped by quite a bit since the pandemic. The 61A has a daily ridership of 1,643 and the 61B has 1,312.

JohnHaugeland 5y ago
those are indeed much lower numbers than i had expected that said, the other person pointing out that it's a three axle bus makes me relatively confident that the fleet contains no domain-relevant busses that had any business going over that bridge in the first place it's worth noting that when i was growing up, patransit tried to send heavy construction trucks across the larimer bridge. one of the crew members stopped them at the last minute when they saw the bridge and called it in (this is way before pocket internet,) and good thing - basically this would have happened, and in that case, it's a probably five or so story drop onto an active highway. would have been a catastrophe.