New York City’s famous public transport system is known for being a lot of things, but simple isn’t one of them. Even for longtime residents of the city, finding the quickest route from one destination to another can be challenging. The complexity of the NYC transit system has been compounded by the fact that the city’s Metro Transit Authority (MTA) has never created a map that includes both subway lines and bus routes. Instead, riders must consult different maps to see all the different components that comprise the city’s massive public transit system. Soon, however, thanks to New York City… Read more »
Although we deal in buses powered by conventional fuels, we always like to stay informed when we hear of a cool company making new waves in the electric bus industry. Today, we’re here to tell you about a French startup that recently raised a whopping $34 million to fund the development of its autonomous electric bus. Navya, a research company based in France, has been developing its self-driving bus, the Arma, for a full decade. The bus finally debuted in October of this year in its first trials in Lyon, France. In its first test run, passengers were treated to… Read more »
There’s some exciting news for public transit riders here in Las Vegas! The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC) has released a new smartphone app that makes it easier than ever to purchase tickets and find bus routes around the city. The app, rideRTC, was developed in a partnership with Masabi, a London-based technology company whose JustRide mobile ticketing platform is used by more than 25 other transportation agencies around the globe. Using rideRTC, commuters and visitors to Las Vegas can locate bus stops, track buses in real time, and purchase transit passes in advance. “RTC Transit takes you… Read more »
Little cars aren’t the only ones getting in on the electric vehicle action. This fall, Proterra, an electric bus maker that’s become one of the most recognizable names in zero-emission bus design, will release its latest model, the E2 Max. According to Electrek, the E2 Max was designed to handle the “daily mileage needs of nearly every U.S. mass transit route on a single charge,” which means these buses can be implemented even in the busiest cities where buses trek many miles back and forth on a single route. The newly designed battery pack in this model can store between… Read more »
Have you ever driven past a parking lot full of old school buses and wondered what becomes of them in their old age? Well, they don’t just sit around in a junkyard forever. You might be interested to learn about what Guatemalans call “chicken buses.” Once an American school bus has been shuttling kids around from home to school to soccer games for about ten years, or when they reach about 150,000 miles on their odometers, they’re resold to places like Guatemala where they’re prepared for their “second lives.” After some engine rebuilds, seating reconfigurations, and some seriously cool paint jobs,… Read more »
With summer vacation over and buses hitting the roads again to shuttle kids back to school, here at Las Vegas Bus Sales we thought it might be a good idea to go over some safety tips for sharing the road with school buses. Safety Starts With Preparedness When you’re sharing the road with a school bus, you should always be prepared to make sudden stops and turns. Make sure to give the bus plenty of space; increase your normal following distance significantly, and pay attention to the bus’s turn signals. When you see a bus unload kids, take your time… Read more »
In recent years, transit companies all across the country have begun installing a variety of amenities such as Wi-Fi routers and charging stations in buses to try to incentivize ridership. It’s a strategy that makes sense in theory, given our ever-increasing dependence on handheld electronics and Internet connectivity. In practice however, it may not be as effective as transit services would hope. According to a new report from research group TransitCenter, Wi-Fi routers might be nice frills, but it’s fast, reliable service that riders really want. The researchers surveyed more than 3,000 respondents from 17 regions throughout the country about… Read more »
Even luxury automakers are taking a stab at the autonomous vehicle market these days. Mercedes-Benz is the latest to throw their hat in the ring with an eye-catching design appropriately named “Future Bus.” Featuring sleek lines and expansive window panes, the design truly does look like the bus of tomorrow. Leave it to Mercedes to make a great-looking vehicle. But the Future Bus is about more than just aesthetics; it’s built to be uncommonly efficient as well. The Future Bus uses Mercedes’ proprietary CityPilot technology that was originally introduced two years ago for the company’s self-driving Actros truck. CityPilot is… Read more »
In addition to their applications in gaming, virtual reality platforms have gained a lot of interest from the educational community in recent years. Imagine teaching engineering students how to work on complex equipment in a virtual laboratory, for example. Or teaching history students about the Civil Rights Movement by allowing them to sit in on the court cases where landmark decisions were made. The only trouble with virtual reality experiences is that they’re usually limited to one person wearing a headset. That’s why Generation Beyond, an educational subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, has turned a school bus into a huge, mobile… Read more »
While transit officials in the Washington, D.C. have been working overtime to repair the city’s aging subway system, a new kind of bus with some serious personality is making its debut in the nation’s capital. It’s called Olli, and it’s got the brain of IBM’s Watson computing system. Olli might be smaller than other buses in the city, but it’s a whole lot smarter. So smart, in fact, that it doesn’t need a human driver. Passengers can hail the little bus from an app similar to Uber or Lyft. Once Olli picks them up, they simply ask the bus to… Read more »
