APTA in Town This Week, With Rail Rodeo!
If you look at the light up display on any MUNI bus, you'll notice a "Welcome 2008 APTA Rail" message along with the usual route number. That's because the American Public Transit Association is having their annual conference in San Francisco this week.
What you may not know is that part of the conference includes a Rail Rodeo, where operators from around the country will compete to see who has the mad transit drivin' skillz.
This is the kind of thing I would have loved to have heard about a bit more in advance, and perhaps go and cover some of the events, instead of just catching a press release on The Google, but having a "real" job sometimes keeps one from being up on every little detail of the Transit Nerd Universe.
Comments
ObSnark: Does the bus rodeo have lifelike mannequins for the MUNI operators to aim at?
Posted by: Dan | May 31, 2008 1:01 PM
I believe they timed the re-release of Cable Car #25 on Wednesday in conjunction with this conference. I just happened to be our riding the cable cars, including this distinctive red one, with my son, only to read the next day about the hoopla.
Posted by: Janice | May 31, 2008 5:47 PM
@janice: oh good point, I forgot about that! IIRC, that is one of the oldest cars in the system...
Posted by: Greg Dewar
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May 31, 2008 6:37 PM
one of my flickr buds has a photo set of "every muni line"- thought you might find it interesting!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/octoferret/sets/72157602047205409/
Posted by: anna | June 1, 2008 12:30 PM
I've been scratching my head trying to make head to tail what APTA is. Thanks for the info!
Posted by: Matt | June 3, 2008 3:25 PM
Results can be found here.
http://www.apta.com/conferences_calendar/railroad/index.cfm
Notice that MUNI was last in the maintainer events (and *very* predictably, the "doors" event.). But they did well in operator events. BART kicked butt in maintainer, though.
Posted by: bdw | June 4, 2008 5:02 PM