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But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities. Some need heat, some need AC, some need both. In Utah there are buses t

But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities. Some need heat, some need AC, some need both. In Utah there are buses that go up the canyons and they have gearboxes focused on climbing steep hills, while a bus in the valley might never need that ratio and can be optimized for efficiency on the flats. Seattle has buses with electric trolley lines above, and buses that were designed to go through the tunnel under downtown on battery power to avoid causing air quality issues in a confined space. https://bsky.app/profile/noahsbwilliams.com/post/3lx4hqvf5q22o https://bsky.app/profile/noahsbwilliams.com/post/3lx4hqvf5q2... Maybe SORTA wanted more customization on the interior of their buses? I'm not sure but in the last year I've been riding buses to work much more than before and I've been interested in the different seating configurations on buses from the same service and route. That shouldn't explain $8 million in differnce but I'm sure that semi custom work isn't cheap. A friend worked on airline interiors which might be reasonably analogous, I wonder what the cost for say Lufthansa seats/upholstery is vs Southwest?

cenamus 1y ago
But they all basically come with AC and heating? At least in basically any semi-modern bus I've ever been in in Europe. No matter if it's -20 or +35 celsius, as long as they turn the AC actually on it's tolerable. And we also have some mountains here, so there's some buses for that (still stock from the factory)
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  No, they certainly don’t all come with AC and heat.
  - decimalenough 1y ago
    I haven't seen a non-AC bus in ages, even in developing countries.
    - jacobgkau 1y ago
      My public school buses in a decent Midwestern suburb had no AC cooling as recently as a decade ago (only heat, since heat comes free with an engine). I wouldn't expect them to have AC cooling today. Buses you pay directly to ride may be a bit different, but I'd also expect AC isn't ubiquitous in those, or wasn't until very recently.
      - fn-mote 1y ago
        They are exactly the same busses. I've never heard of a school bus with AC in the US. (Please, someone from Arizona correct me.)
    - hibikir 1y ago
      You'll find buses with no AC in northern Spain today. And it's not ancient ones, but ones running on natural gas: They option then without, making them a hazard in July and August. I've seen one specifically operated to take special needs children to their facility, where we'd argue with the company that the fact that they are special needs doesn't mean they don't feel the heat in the summer.
    - goalieca 1y ago
      In Vancouver the climate generally does not need them. Some days it gets hot and those suck.
    - dmbche 1y ago
      The vast majority of buses in Montreal, Canada do not have AC. Crack a window in the summer. Does have heat in the winter though.
    - inferiorhuman 1y ago
      It's been a while since I've been on Muni but most of their bus fleet did not have AC as of 2019.
    - 4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
      Busses without AC drive kids to school everyday out here in the American Midwest.
  - unethical_ban 1y ago
    The number of places in the US that will never need both at some point is vanishingly small.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Irish buses don't have AC (rarely hot enough here to need it) and the electric ones only have heating adequate for about 0 degrees and up (rarely colder than that, though they're unpleasant when it is).
- pas 1y ago
  they should, also with air filters, noise and air quality are big issues, keeping windows closed would help a lot yes, it's expensive, yes, people's revealed presences indicate they don't care for these things, they rather give up QALYs than sitting hours every day in "rush hour traffic"
psunavy03 1y ago
> Seattle has buses with electric trolley lines above, and buses that were designed to go through the tunnel under downtown on battery power to avoid causing air quality issues in a confined space. And then the city government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to shut the tunnel down and make it light rail-only, forcing the buses up onto the surface and clogging up the street grid.
- SpicyUme 1y ago
  I go back and forth on that, the bus tunnel was useful. But a tunnel with 3(4?) stops seems like a good place for a train of some sort. I guess the buses are why there are no center stops in there? It seems like a missed opportunity. Not sure about the history of the tunnel but there were tracks there years ago so they must have planned to put trains in eventually.
  - psunavy03 1y ago
    The Link light rail uses it.
- vkou 1y ago
  Given the choice between clogging up the city grid for car commuters, and clogging up the rail grid because buses are pushed to share rail lines, I'm going to pull the trigger on the first option, every day of the week. Clogging up the rail grid was somewhat acceptable when it was a few end-of-line terminal stops, but now those tunnels are in the middle of the rail network. A bus breaking down and blocking the tunnel was bad enough when it affected end-of-line service, but would be an absolute nightmare when it affects middle-of-line service. Sorry, downtown single-occupant vehicle drivers, you're just going to have to deal with the consequences of spending tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dollars on your choice of the least space-efficient, gridlock-inducing form of transportation.
  - axiolite 1y ago
    It's not that pushing buses onto surface streets makes it worse for cars. It's that it makes it worse for buses, which then leads people to take cars instead, which makes things even worse.
danpalmer 1y ago
> But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities That's sometimes true but often not. Utah might need buses to go up the canyons, but might have passed some requirement at some point that said that all the buses need to be able to do this because someone got burnt once by not having enough of those buses. Or some well-meaning (or vote seeking?) city councillor might have put through a bill to put USB-A chargers in all the seats, which will stick around far longer than those coming as standard making them an expensive custom option. What you end up with is requirements that make the buses custom purchases, which massively inflates their costs, when any reasonable person would say that such custom attributes aren't (always) needed. By having a strong opinion about something, the city will pay far more than if they bought an off-the-shelf solution. Much of "the west" is particularly affected by this sort of attitude. Everywhere and everyone is convinced that they are special in some way and need something specific, but end up paying for it. This is part of why India can send a probe to Mars for $72m, or why Singapore can buy busses at $300k instead of $1m. And to be clear, I say this having grown up in the UK and moved to Australia, both places with a certain amount of this attitude.
- 4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
  Do you have a specific citeable example of unnecessary “custom requirements” driving up the cost of city buses in the US
  - danpalmer 1y ago
    My point about the buses is about "missing the forest for the trees", so the fact that you've focused on getting a specific citable example while missing the point is quite ironic. Here's an industry article about the phenomenon: https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-excess-customization/ https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-exc... And here's a study documenting excess customisation as a driver of the costs: https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for-public-transit-buses/#:~:text=A%20final%20notable,economies%20of%20scale https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for... – which notes that "70 percent of contracts in the BGS data in 2024 were for unique buses".
AtlasBarfed 1y ago
PHEV drivetrain with a 50 mile all electric range: would handle virtually all of the situations. Climbing a steep hill? EV drivetrains don't care and provide great torque. Start/stop? perfect. Regenerative braking? There you go. Need all-electric for a spell? Gas to extend range? Gas for AC/Heat? ok ok ok. Smooth operation? Low noise? Low/no emissions? yes yes yes Less wear? Less gas? Lower operating costs? Simpler drivetrains? Simpler repairs? yes to all of it. Every bus should have been forced to be a PHEV drivetrain within a decade of the Prius/Insight being released in 1997. The USPS should have been all PHEV by then too.
DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
One way that China keeps the cost of subways down is by standardizing the train sets. They have three types of trains (A, B, C) that are used in almost all subway systems across the country. You need a high-capacity train? A. You have a smaller line with fewer passengers? C. Something in-between? B. There are a few variants for cities with special circumstances. Chongqing uses variants that can handle steeper slopes, because the city is incredibly hilly (like San Francisco). By standardizing, prices can be kept down. Cities don't have to come up with custom solutions. Just define your needs and pick the standard variant that matches them. Something similar could be done with buses.

cenamus 1y ago

But they all basically come with AC and heating? At least in basically any semi-modern bus I've ever been in in Europe. No matter if it's -20 or +35 celsius, as long as they turn the AC actually on it's tolerable. And we also have some mountains here, so there's some buses for that (still stock from the factory)

lazyasciiart 1y ago
No, they certainly don’t all come with AC and heat.
- decimalenough 1y ago
  I haven't seen a non-AC bus in ages, even in developing countries.
  - jacobgkau 1y ago
    My public school buses in a decent Midwestern suburb had no AC cooling as recently as a decade ago (only heat, since heat comes free with an engine). I wouldn't expect them to have AC cooling today. Buses you pay directly to ride may be a bit different, but I'd also expect AC isn't ubiquitous in those, or wasn't until very recently.
    - fn-mote 1y ago
      They are exactly the same busses. I've never heard of a school bus with AC in the US. (Please, someone from Arizona correct me.)
  - hibikir 1y ago
    You'll find buses with no AC in northern Spain today. And it's not ancient ones, but ones running on natural gas: They option then without, making them a hazard in July and August. I've seen one specifically operated to take special needs children to their facility, where we'd argue with the company that the fact that they are special needs doesn't mean they don't feel the heat in the summer.
  - goalieca 1y ago
    In Vancouver the climate generally does not need them. Some days it gets hot and those suck.
  - dmbche 1y ago
    The vast majority of buses in Montreal, Canada do not have AC. Crack a window in the summer. Does have heat in the winter though.
  - inferiorhuman 1y ago
    It's been a while since I've been on Muni but most of their bus fleet did not have AC as of 2019.
  - 4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
    Busses without AC drive kids to school everyday out here in the American Midwest.
- unethical_ban 1y ago
  The number of places in the US that will never need both at some point is vanishingly small.
rsynnott 1y ago
Irish buses don't have AC (rarely hot enough here to need it) and the electric ones only have heating adequate for about 0 degrees and up (rarely colder than that, though they're unpleasant when it is).
pas 1y ago
they should, also with air filters, noise and air quality are big issues, keeping windows closed would help a lot yes, it's expensive, yes, people's revealed presences indicate they don't care for these things, they rather give up QALYs than sitting hours every day in "rush hour traffic"

psunavy03 1y ago

> Seattle has buses with electric trolley lines above, and buses that were designed to go through the tunnel under downtown on battery power to avoid causing air quality issues in a confined space. And then the city government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to shut the tunnel down and make it light rail-only, forcing the buses up onto the surface and clogging up the street grid.

SpicyUme 1y ago
I go back and forth on that, the bus tunnel was useful. But a tunnel with 3(4?) stops seems like a good place for a train of some sort. I guess the buses are why there are no center stops in there? It seems like a missed opportunity. Not sure about the history of the tunnel but there were tracks there years ago so they must have planned to put trains in eventually.
- psunavy03 1y ago
  The Link light rail uses it.
vkou 1y ago
Given the choice between clogging up the city grid for car commuters, and clogging up the rail grid because buses are pushed to share rail lines, I'm going to pull the trigger on the first option, every day of the week. Clogging up the rail grid was somewhat acceptable when it was a few end-of-line terminal stops, but now those tunnels are in the middle of the rail network. A bus breaking down and blocking the tunnel was bad enough when it affected end-of-line service, but would be an absolute nightmare when it affects middle-of-line service. Sorry, downtown single-occupant vehicle drivers, you're just going to have to deal with the consequences of spending tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dollars on your choice of the least space-efficient, gridlock-inducing form of transportation.
- axiolite 1y ago
  It's not that pushing buses onto surface streets makes it worse for cars. It's that it makes it worse for buses, which then leads people to take cars instead, which makes things even worse.

danpalmer 1y ago

> But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities That's sometimes true but often not. Utah might need buses to go up the canyons, but might have passed some requirement at some point that said that all the buses need to be able to do this because someone got burnt once by not having enough of those buses. Or some well-meaning (or vote seeking?) city councillor might have put through a bill to put USB-A chargers in all the seats, which will stick around far longer than those coming as standard making them an expensive custom option. What you end up with is requirements that make the buses custom purchases, which massively inflates their costs, when any reasonable person would say that such custom attributes aren't (always) needed. By having a strong opinion about something, the city will pay far more than if they bought an off-the-shelf solution. Much of "the west" is particularly affected by this sort of attitude. Everywhere and everyone is convinced that they are special in some way and need something specific, but end up paying for it. This is part of why India can send a probe to Mars for $72m, or why Singapore can buy busses at $300k instead of $1m. And to be clear, I say this having grown up in the UK and moved to Australia, both places with a certain amount of this attitude.

4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
Do you have a specific citeable example of unnecessary “custom requirements” driving up the cost of city buses in the US
- danpalmer 1y ago
  My point about the buses is about "missing the forest for the trees", so the fact that you've focused on getting a specific citable example while missing the point is quite ironic. Here's an industry article about the phenomenon: https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-excess-customization/ https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-exc... And here's a study documenting excess customisation as a driver of the costs: https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for-public-transit-buses/#:~:text=A%20final%20notable,economies%20of%20scale https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for... – which notes that "70 percent of contracts in the BGS data in 2024 were for unique buses".

AtlasBarfed 1y ago

PHEV drivetrain with a 50 mile all electric range: would handle virtually all of the situations. Climbing a steep hill? EV drivetrains don't care and provide great torque. Start/stop? perfect. Regenerative braking? There you go. Need all-electric for a spell? Gas to extend range? Gas for AC/Heat? ok ok ok. Smooth operation? Low noise? Low/no emissions? yes yes yes Less wear? Less gas? Lower operating costs? Simpler drivetrains? Simpler repairs? yes to all of it. Every bus should have been forced to be a PHEV drivetrain within a decade of the Prius/Insight being released in 1997. The USPS should have been all PHEV by then too.

DiogenesKynikos 1y ago

One way that China keeps the cost of subways down is by standardizing the train sets. They have three types of trains (A, B, C) that are used in almost all subway systems across the country. You need a high-capacity train? A. You have a smaller line with fewer passengers? C. Something in-between? B. There are a few variants for cities with special circumstances. Chongqing uses variants that can handle steeper slopes, because the city is incredibly hilly (like San Francisco). By standardizing, prices can be kept down. Cities don't have to come up with custom solutions. Just define your needs and pick the standard variant that matches them. Something similar could be done with buses.