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Re: Whatever Happened to NY's Grumman Flxible Model 870s (115891)

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Posted by Planes, Trains, Autos (and buses) on Wed Jun 2 00:19:58 2004, in response to Whatever Happened to NY's Grumman Flxible Model 870s,
posted by Mark S. Feinman on Tue Jun 1 22:49:50 2004.

The bus that caught on fire was actually an express bus from Brooklyn. Yes, they sat at the Army term for a long time. During this time the TA tried to blame Grumman for their own lousy maintanence pratices and the UMTA wanted the TA put the buses back in serivce. The TA continued to say that the buses were lemones and unsafe. Grumman later agreed to buy the buses back, refurbished them a bit and resold them at a sweet bargain. NJT bought 120 of them and immediately they had fallen upon a great deal and they decided to buy 500 more of them. Queen City Metro (Cincinatti) also bought some. Some also went to Puerto Rico. Well those 620 "unsafe lemons" at New Jersey Transit performed very well and the last of them were retired just a few years ago.

I remember them well as I rode them new at NYCTA/MABSTOA and a couple of times at NJT. From what I've heard NJT were quite pleased with the ex-NYCTA 870s as well as those they purchased new.

The privates (Jamaica Buses, Green Bus Lines, Triboro Coach, Queens Transit and Steinway Transit) and MSBA also had Grumman 870s. These buses served long careers on some of the same streets that NYCTA said the 870s could not handle. Jamaica Buses 870s operated 'til around '00.

When the "affected" Grumman 870s were first taken out of service by verious agencies nation-wide. There were 2,656 buses (205 at CAT, 230 at SCRTD and others) that were returned to Grumman to be retrofitted with stronger A-frames. Of all of these buses NYCTA was the only agency to claim that the buses were unsafe.

The bottom line is that NYCTA was simply full of it as they are today. Granted - we all know that Grumman 870 had their problems, but NYCTA was trying to blame them for more than they were responsible for. My question to NYCTA is: If the buses were such lemons and unsafe why is it that they operated for years elsewhere in addition to that the DOT privates which remained in service in New York City streets.

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