Double-length buses? Seriously?

This Orange Line articulated bus, at 60 feet, is the longest a bus could be by law. But for Metro, the biggest is not big enough. Now it will take 65 feet, or maybe even 80 feet (!), to handle the Valley busway’s loads.
Credit: Mitch Glaser, Paradox Unbound, via Flickr

The Daily News reports that Metro is now going to test 65-foot, and get this, 80-foot, buses on the Orange Line.

The first bus, the 65-footer, is set to destroy pavement this summer. State laws limit the length of a bus to 60 feet, the length of articulated buses, but Metro gets an exemption. It might pave the way for the anaconda of vehicles, a yet-unbuilt 80-foot monster that is the length of two standard buses.

The Daily News says: “The intent is to mimic rail service as much as possible.”

This is not cutting-edge innovation. This is mental illness.

For one thing, Metro is essentially forcing bus builders to build a vehicle that does not exists and has no sales prospects anywhere else. Generally, bus builders look for at least 500 new units for viability. The Orange Line roster needs at least 35 buses to maintain existing services. It’s prohibitive for Metro to demand, and bus companies to build, what is custom-made equipment.

A super-long bus like this exists for Curitiba, Brazil’s fabled busway, but the vehicle is not street legal in the United States nor is there a company that can cost-effectively produce a copy of the Brazilian version.

And these buses will have to use surface streets. The approach between the busway and Warner Center is on surface streets in mixed traffic. As the repaving detour and collisions have shown, the Orange Line has to leave the busway for surface streets. An 80-foot bus cannot negotiate turns well.

But what has to be the worst part is that Metro has to buy these cumbersome monsters to feed a delusion. A rail line was not built on a former right of way that once had tracks, yet the Orange Line has still proven to be a very successful line — the Valley’s second busiest route after only a year of operation. But rather than promoting the success of a project that revolutionizes a large step forward for buses, Metro sells the Orange Line as the best half-assed rail project in the world.

Realistically, rail was not a realistic prospect for what is now the Orange Line. So it was either getting the busway or leaving the land to be overrun by weeds. The Orange Line made good use of a dormant right of way, and a bus is nothing to be ashamed of when the alternative local services would have been less frequent and much slower. And the Valley is more grateful for a bus service than the Gold Line haters who made a psychodrama about the four minutes on Marmion Way being sheer agony.

But responding to this problem of success with the absurdity of a bus that has to clear dozens of regulatory hurdles before a manufacturer can even take specs is lunacy. Instead, Metro should see if it can exercise its option to buy more of NABI’s 60-BRT buses to deploy on the Orange Line and increase service.

Or, go with the Miami option. Miami-Dade Transit’s busway is very similar to the Orange Line, where the roadway exclusive to buses terminates at its Metrorail station. However, Miami has several local buses that use the busway and hop-off, and an all-stops line complements these routes. Metro could route the north-south buses onto the busway and eliminate a transfer for most bus riders.

Either more frequent Orange Line service or the Miami option uses what Metro already has to enhance the Valley’s busway. Running not-yet-available 65- and 80-foot buses is bad enough. Believing anyone not pulling a paycheck from Metro think it is rail. That’s insane.