Every two years the 124-year-old International Union of Public Transport (UITP) holds a major Conference and Exhibition, and staged its 58th event in June in Vienna, Austria.
The capital of Austria is a fascinating city with a long and colorful history, and is the only city in Europe with a million-plus population in which more people travel by public transport than by car, with a highly efficient network of metro, tram and bus services.
As the economic downturn continues, motorcoach companies of every size are experiencing its impact, doing what they can to weather the conditions. The more pro-active operators are exploring new markets and ways to retain existing customers. Added value is one such strategy.
Three years ago when the economy was beginning to show some promise, Daimler Buses North America, Greensboro, NC, could not have stated luxury any bolder than at the 2006 UMA Expo with its one word campaign. The dominant theme in the marketing and promotion of the Setra S 417, the word luxury leaps off the side of the floor model.
In the South Pacific where coral reefs surround each of the 15 atolls that make up the Cook Islands, only two bus routes run on the main island of Rarotonga. One runs clockwise, the other anti-clockwise to serve the population of 14,000. The company owner Kevin Cook and his drivers could not ask for a more manageable traffic system.
DesignLine USA, Charlotte, NC, announced in June the first of 21 hybrid-electric transit buses are headed to the City of Baltimore, while New York City is completing its testing and evaluation and is about to take delivery on its first of 90 DesignLine vehicles.
When his European Tour hit town in early May, 67-year-old music legend Bob Dylan paid £16 and stepped aboard a public tour bus in Liverpool, UK, as one of 14 tourists to examine photos and documents in the National Trust-owned home where Beatle John Lennon grew up with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George.
Gray Line Worldwide, Denver, CO, recently folded the Dominican Republic into its global network of sightseeing tours, which includes the Turks and Caicos Islands within the Caribbean.
I am all for communicating thoroughly in as few words as possible, but I do not twitter. Think haiku poetry in which the form reduces the keenest observation to its purest 17 syllables.
The Basque region bordering the Atlantic in northern Spain is the industrial heartland of that country. In 1889, Jose Francisco Irizar, a blacksmith in the village of Ormaiztegi started building horse-drawn wooden carts, soon followed by stagecoaches.
The emission standards that went into effect in 2007 have created further issues in an industry that has one of the lowest pollution emissions per passenger in the entire transportation industry. Nonetheless they are here to stay.
A little after the fact, but still a relevant case study on the logistics involved in troop movements. Lamers Bus Lines made history this past winter in Wisconsin when it moved a total of 3,500 National Guard troops over the course of eight hours.
The soldiers of the 32nd Brigade were headed to Camp Blanding, FL, to receive training prior to their eventual 11-month assignment in Iraq.