An example of why most of the time I walk around non-plussed

Photo by Steve Pinkus.

While I don't ride the DC Downtown Circulator all that frequently, I do ride it from time to time and it has always struck me as a comfortable ride, roomy, and especially quiet.

Yet apparently the same buses are not considered so favorably in Alameda County, California, according to the Berkeley Daily Planet article, "AC Transit Increases Use of Controversial Buses." From the article:

But East Bay community activist Joyce Roy disagreed, telling board members that she had “hoped that the board would focus on attracting new riders, but these [Van Hool] buses are discouraging to new riders. If Muni put them on the streets in San Francisco with all of their middle class riders, the outcry would be so great, they’d be off the streets in a week. But in Oakland, so many of your riders are disabled and the elderly who have no choice but to ride the bus, you can get by with it.”

Following the meeting, Roy referred to the buses as “Van Hells” and called the decision to move forward with the Van Hool contract “par for the course for a district and a board that regularly ignores the wishes of the public.” ...

Doug Buchwald of Berkeley, the organizer of the “save the oaks” campaign at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium, who said he rides the 51 bus every day, called the original Van Hool purchase “the worst mistake ever made by this district. It seems like that decision was made by people who don’t ride buses.” (That brought an angry retort by several board members, some of whom said they ride buses either regularly or exclusively.)

And Bonnie Hughes, another Berkeley resident, said that “I used to be a dedicated bus rider, but I suffer from bus rage now. The whole world is turned upside down. We don’t want war, and the war escalates. We hate these [Van Hool] buses, and you buy more. Do you hate your bus riders? I’m really upset.”

And Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 Recording Secretary and Executive Board member David Lyons, an AC Transit driver, called the Van Hools “the poorest bus the district has purchased in 27 years. They have an unstable ride and make the drivers prone to injury. A lot of us are hurting from driving these buses. The district is going to face an increase in workers’ compensation in the future because of them. Did anybody do a survey of the drivers before you decided to go ahead with the new purchase? It would be very valuable to get our input.”

Lyons’ question provoked an exchange between AC Transit Board President Greg Harper (Ward Two—Emeryville, Piedmont, and portions of Berkeley) and General Manager Fernandez in which Fernandez admitted that AC Transit has taken no “formal” driver survey of the Van Hool buses, and he and Harper revealed that they had both taken informal surveys, with completely opposite results. “A majority [of the drivers] say they like the Van Hools, but the passengers didn’t,” Fernandez said.

This is the kind of example of an exchange that I have witnessed in DC, with people's expressed negative opinions often the complete opposite of my own experience. Either I am completely out of touch, or less fearful of change, or a more objective observer.