I got on a bus (an empty one) the other night and it had what can only be referred to as “new bus smell.” It’s not quite new car smell, but in the general vicinity. Being the only one on the bus at the time (several others joined at the next few stops) I asked the driver about it. He reckoned the bus entered circulation in the summer (4-6 months) earlier.
I wasn’t really thinking about it, but he told me how many miles were on it: 20,000. I thought about that for a moment, 20,000 miles. My wife and I barely have 20,000 miles on our car and it just surpassed 2 and a half years old.
The driver went on to tell me that the buses, the new ones at least, are kept running day and night. It would be kind of interesting to have a running counter or display of how many people had ridden the bus. The system for paying is fairly automated, so I would think it’d be possible. How many people-miles had the bus traveled? In other words, if 5 people (not including the driver) had been passengers for the entire life of the bus, it would be 100,000 people-miles. I realize it would be harder to calculate this as people exit at different times, although some routes you pay/scan your card when you leave. How many car traveled miles were avoided by bus trips? It’s pretty amazing when the bus is standing room only. Right now there are only 15-20 people on the bus, but that’s 15-20 cars not on the road if everyone drove alone, which looks pretty popular despite the traffic build up and access to a dedicated carpool/HOV lane.
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