Squeaking, lurching and hissing city buses are as much a part of the Manhattan soundtrack as cab horns and Ramones tunes coming up through the floor from that skinny guy in 2D.
But a pilot program from the MTA unveils some buses that are conspicuous in their silence. The New York Times reports that three of them, at $559,000 apiece, are currently on the road.
When the DesignLine stops short, or takes off from a light, there is little more than a low groan. An onboard air-conditioner usually drowns out any sound from the engine.
The other day, one block north of Astor Place, James Sollecito sat down behind the wheel and gradually eased the bus onto Fourth Avenue for a 90-minute trip to Washington Heights. The engine hummed softly as its driver peered out from the extra-large Plexiglas windshield, a sheer single pane that resembled an astronaut’s visor writ large.
“I never drove anything that accelerates like this,” Mr. Sollecito, who has driven city buses for 15 years, said approvingly, as the bus glided along the street jerk-free.
Silence, that rare commodity on the city streets, is achieved by throwing out the most basic element of automobile design: internal combustion. Instead of a noisy, piston-based engine, the DesignLine operates on a spinning turbine that recharges a lithium-ion battery, a green energy source more commonly found inside laptop computers. That means fewer moving parts, and fewer ways to create a racket.
It being New York and all, some riders were not impressed. Others dug the quiet–and apparently sweet-smelling–buses.
Malachai Williams, a second grader at Public School 171 in East Harlem, put it more bluntly. “This bus is awesome!” he said, plopping into a seat toward the back. “It smells like a bus that takes you to different countries and states.”
This spells doom for cyclists who count on their hearing to avoid busses and cabs.