ansoncfit » bus

Buses of Curitiba

ansoncfit — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:59:40 +0000

Curitiba, Brazil, implemented the world’s first bus rapid transit system in the 1970s. Along with programs to convert floodplains to green space, pedestrianize downtown streets, and improve waste collection, the new “surface metro” transformed the city. Curitiba is the inspiration for many of the other BRT projects I learned about during my year of travel, so a visit there was perfect for my last stop.

: New Volvo/Caio biarticulated bus

: Malfunctioning loading ramp

: New Volvo/Neobus biodiesel biarticulated bus

: “Arrive home more quickly with the new Express Line”

: Shirtless bike ride in the middle of winter

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Trolleybuses of Valparaíso

ansoncfit — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:07:23 +0000

Valparaíso’s electric trolleybuses are an iconic part of the city and were even included in the city’s petition for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. A significant portion of the fleet was manufactured by Pullman in the United States in the late 1940s.

: 1952 Pullman trolleybus

: 1948 Pullman trolleybus passing through Plaza Sotomayor

: Trolleybuses along Avenida Argentina

: Hopping off a 1948 Pullman Trolleybus

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Patagonia Bus Marathon

ansoncfit — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 04:48:41 +0000

View Patagonia Bus Marathon in a larger map

Traveling the 1400 miles from Ushuaia to Viedma took about 37 hours by bus. The first leg was especially slow given the four border posts (for the short stretch of the trip in Chilean territory) and the ferry ride over the Strait of Magellan. I took a couple hours to walk around Río Gallegos and stayed for one night in Comodoro Rivadavia to break up the rest of the trip. Traveling in coche cama, which includes food, drinks, and bed-like seats was a treat. I also enjoyed the expansive views of the pampas and seeing some guanacos.

: Bus from Río Grande to Río Gallegos (required stopping at four border posts)

: On a ferry crossing the Strait of Magellan

: Coche cama!

: The main street in Río Gallegos, the Kirchners’ hometown

: Sunrise over Comodoro Rivadavia

: Wind turbine public art

: Río Gallegos, an oil boomtown, is also home to a large windfarm

: Río Negro

: Junkyard in Carmen de Patagones

: Boarding the ferry between Carmen de Patagones and Viedma

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Manejar un Diablo Rojo | Driving a Red Devil

ansoncfit — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 19:45:39 +0000

Bus Music Videos

ansoncfit — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 03:55:05 +0000

I found a frequently running TV commercial for a local Nicaraguan radio station to be quite interesting. The commercial opened with a scene of a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop, looking frustratedly at their watches (a situation that most Managuans can easily identify with). A new Kurgansky Avtobusny Zavod bus finally pulls up, and the petulant passengers board and sit down. The bus driver then turns up the volume for the advertised radio station, and the passengers start smiling and dancing happily in the aisle.

The use of the bus in the commercial was interesting enough, but I decided to do a bit more research on the song to which the passengers were dancing. The song, which I also heard on some of my daily microbus commutes from Ticuantepe to Managua, was Juan Luis Guerra’s “Bachata en Fukuoka.” Yes, that’s Fukuoka, Japan – the lyrics include the “kon’nichi wa,” “ohayō gozaimasu,” and “arigatō gozaimasu.”

To sum up, I was watching a Russian-made bus in a commercial for a Nicaraguan radio station that used a Dominican artist’s song that includes the Japanese in the lyrics, and for which the official music video has shots of the Los Angeles skyline and the Metro Gold Line. As David Harvey writes, “collage and eclecticism have recently come to dominate” in contemporary music (The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 301). The song’s music video (which also happens to involve people sitting on a bus) exemplifies the “depthlessness…in a whole new culture of the image or the simulacrum.” The split-second clips of freight locomotives along the Los Angeles River or Japanese characters on a storefront have nothing to do with their actual significance or meaning, but are instead used just as images.

I couldn’t find the Nicaraguan commercial online, but here is the official “Bachata en Fukuoka” music video:

The “Bachata en Fukuoka” video’s various transportation mode are nothing compared to the buscentricity of another one of Juan Luis Guerra’s songs from this year, “La Guagua” (“The Bus”). The refrain of the song can be translated as “Shift into gear and straighten it out | so that the bus will go in reverse!…| Bring me the maraca and give me a party | so that the bus will go in reverse!” The majority of the music video (embedded below) was filmed on a 1980s Blue Bird All American FE. Highlights include the bus driving backwards through the countryside, the driver eating spaghetti and shaving behind the wheel, a cow with 3-D glasses, a trombonist wearing an I ♥ Fukuoka shirt (in reference to the previously discussed song), and the climactic scene of party-goers at a concert for which the stage’s background is the silhouette of the back of a school bus. I’m not sure why Juan Luis Guerra is so interested in buses, but I’ll take the music videos for these two songs (both of which were on A Son de Guerra, the 2010 Latin Grammy Best Album) as a… Read the rest