BusTalk

[Q65A]

Today I had the pleasure of attending a TM-sponsored tour of the new Grand Avenue Depot/CMF. G/S (Depot Ops.) Liz Roman and her staff, along with Luz Montano of the TM, conducted a very informative 3 hour tour of this high-tech facility (which opened 1/6/0. Nearly 30 persons showed up for the tour; for security reasons, no photos were permitted inside the depot or CMF. The Grand Avenue Depot (Bklyn Division) currently has 170 buses assigned: 42 '93 TMC RTS, 63 '98 Nova RTS, and 65 '05 Orion VII HEV's. It is the base for 11 routes: B15, B24, B39, B43, B47, B48, B51, B57, B60, B61, and Q59). AGM James Courtney runs the depot, which has 624 employees working in almost 294,000 sq. ft. on 2 floors (designated 1 and 1M). We boarded NYCT 6570 (an Orion VII HEV driven by shifter "Big X") for a quick trip through one of the depot's 3 automated wash bays (which can use rainwater and which can recycle water routinely). We saw some of the GA fleet in the depot for running repairs (mostly RTS's plus a couple of HEV's). After a snack in the maintainer's swing room, we toured the B/O's swing room, pick room, dispatcher's office and other facilities before heading upstairs to the CMF II (I assume Zerega Ave. is CMF I).
Located on floors 2, 2M, and 3, this CMF is state of the art and very "green". It boasts 2 large paint booths that are long enough to hold an artic (NYCT 5717, assigned to KB, was prepped and ready for a paint job, presumably sometime this week). The facility has chassis and engine wash bays, and dynamometers for brakes, engines, and transmissions. Liz's team really went into great detail about the facility and the buses that routinely call there. Apparently, NYCDOT is in the process of installing new traffic signals at Grand Avenue and 49th Pl. that may eventually be controlled by the GA dispatcher (not unlike FDNY-controlled signals near firehouse entrances), because the commercial traffic volume in this hevily industrialized part of Maspeth is quite heavy, and buses attempting to pull out of GA have had a tough time on occasion. The nearby Grand St. swingspan movable bridge is too narrow to permit 2 large vehicles to pass in opposite directions, which is another traffic limiting factor. I had visited Zerega CMF a few years ago, and it is laid out very differently than GA: the former is much more horizontally oriented, while GA is a much more vertical facility (with different levels accessed by curving ramps). All in all, my visit was very enjoyable, and I think my fellow visitors felt likewise.

[B53RICH]

Something I read on another forum, was there any mention of MTAB taking over LI Bus during the Grand Avenue Depot tour?

[Q65A]

One of the DOB tour guides did in fact mention that eventually MTAB and LIB would be integrated with the DOB into a single large agency, but there was no mention about any specific timetables for such an consolidation to occur.
One other important piece of info: the 2008 DOB Roadeo was mentioned as being scheduled for June 22 & 23, but I suspect that these dates are not exactly correct (6/23 is a Monday, and I believe that the DOB Roadeos normally are held on Saturday & Sunday on a given weekend).
I would think that the correct dates for the 2008 DOB Roadeo actually would be Sat. 6/21 and Sun. 6/22.

[B53RICH]

Thank you for that information. Just what I have thought, no immediate takeover. Another poster who was at the same tour reported this info on SubChat and everyone is going nuts again thinking LI Bus will become part of MTAB like tomorrow.

[N4 Jamaica]

Yesterday I rode the Q59 in search of the new depot. I had no idea where along Grand Avenue it was, and I had not been over much of that route since streetcar days. The new garage is enormous! Thanks for posting your description of the inside. We left Queens Center at 3:45 p.m. and switched drivers at Page Place at 4:11. I expected that the crowd from Queens Center would abandon the bus in Maspeth near the L.I.E., but they continued on board. I was surprised at the number of workers we picked up at the industries along Grand Avenue and then along the Brooklyn route. The DOT site says that the Grand Avenue bridge, built in 1903, has a roadway width of 6.0 meters. A 102-inch bus is about 2.6 meters wide. I guess opposing buses could pass, but the clearance might be tricky. Best wishes.

[NovaRTS-06 #9101]

Yea Grand it a Good looking Depot its was long over due the Decal Could have been Better.