New Flyer Buses
Let’s not talk about what it means that a high point of my day Tuesday was noticing that I was riding on a new style CTA bus. This one happened to be a hybrid diesel/electric model and at first I thought that the features like hanging straps and new style seats might be specific to that model, but it turns out that it’s common to the 630 New Flyer buses already in service in Chicago (with 200 more just ordered) . So, not only am I excited about CTA minutia, but I’m excited about old-news-to-you CTA minutia. Awesome. Anyway, I’m already a fan of hanging straps — 16%* less arm strain for standing passengers.
* Made up statistic.
I wonder how often they will clean these straps. They certainly are nice. But I don’t picture the cleaning crew spending the time to really clean each one. But then again, you come to expect that the L won’t be all clean anyways.