I came across this quaint documentary video made by the Santa Monica Bus Lines – and it sure brought back a flood of memories of my bus riding days in the ‘60s.Â
Coin changer, transfers, small talk with the driver…things have changed quite a bit over the past fifty years. LA residents will likely recognize many of the streets and locations.
Santa Monica‘s “Big Blue Bus” held on to their New Looks much longer than other locales – the last one was finally retired in 2005.
I love these old films! I even remember the EB logo from all the films we watched in school.
What a great film, it brought back a lot of memories from my high school days in the late 70’s and early 80’s when I rode the city bus in the Bronx. Back then they had both the early GMC buses with chrome bumpers and later ones with rubber bumpers. On the bus route to school there was a very long steep hill the the loaded buses crawled up, the driver flooring the accelerator. And then it happened one day, the bus started to fill with smoke and the driver stopped. We all started to file out to walk to the next stop and catch the next bus, but not my friend, he wasn’t leaving, he didn’t want to lose his seat! Good times!
I live in the Bronx today and ride the buses from time to time. Do you recall which street you were on?
I grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx on West 254th street and Broadway, near Van Cortlandt Park. The bus eating hill was on Kingsbridge Road, a few blocks east of Broadway. When the buses were loaded, kids would run up the hill and beat the bus, and those were the slow running kids!
Talk about a bus trip down memory lane. This almost perfectly describes my bus driving experience in Iowa City. Having to invest my own limited financial resources into a coin changer and the bank of coins was a bit of a rude awakening. The fare was 15 cents, which meant that 90% of the riders handed you a quarter, and I had to make change. Finally just before I quit, they raised the fare to 25 cents. Yippie!
The mechanics didn’t start our buses up for us in the morning; we fired them up ourselves in the garage and pulled out.
I got to know my regular riders well, after I got a regular route. I’d just stop the bus in front of their house, instead of the corner (every corner was a bus stop there).
If I was on a route headed to the university, on winter mornings the bus would be jammed to absolute capacity, Tokyo subway-jammed. The 6 cyl. buses would struggle under the load.
Fortunately, there were no mandatory uniforms anymore when I drove; some of the old timers still wore them, but I could wear whatever I wanted, which was a relief.
We moved to Santa Monica in 1977, and I used to enjoy watching (and hearing) their big blue buses; it was always such a well-run bus company.
Jim, thanks for this; it was a real treat.
My pleasure – first time I saw this, I thought, “I bet Paul would like this…” Jim
I spent quite a few hours on those GM New Look buses and this film took me right back there. There was a bus stop on the street behind mine and I caught a bus to my downtown job after school. My mother took this same bus to her downtown job every morning and home every evening.
I got off work at 9 pm and that bus no longer ran that late so I took another to a stop about 3 miles from home where Mom would pick me up in the car.
After Mom took a job that required her to drive every day I was *finally* allowed to buy a car. That ended my bus riding days.
Thank you for finding this Jim. Compared to many current buses, one advantage all high floor buses like the New Look offered over modern low floor models, was capacity. The New Looks held a lot of people. Of course, they also excluded many without wheelchair access, or accessibility for those with limited mobility.
‘Punched’ paper transfers like those used in this film, were used by transit companies well into the 1990s. As the narrator stated, these buses were extremely heavy, leading to crushing road surface damage on well traveled routes.
When my local transit was looking to add some short term high floor buses to their fleet in the mid 1990s, they leased and later bought 25 ex-Santa Monica New looks, all built in 1973. Compared to the rust and wear on the local New Looks, they appeared in great shape at the time.
These are the busses I remember too, when Halifax NS got rid of its c.1950 electric trolley busses in the late 1960’s.
I had to chuckle about the driver continuously greeting passengers by name. Would that have been possible, even 50 years ago? As an aside though, people in Vancouver regularly thank the driver when they get off the bus, even by the rear doors. The rule of thumb seems to be for individuals to say ‘thank you’ when they’re exiting by themselves, and for at least 2 or 3 to say it when larger numbers are getting off.
I don’t remember that being the custom 20 years ago (although I rarely used transit back then), or know if it’s common in other cities. It’s a nice custom though.
Pretty cruisy job, the freight self loads and unloads, no straps, chains, curtains or tarps, its only a 10 metre four wheeler and automatic no trailer, Other traffic was and is a constant menace but all in all not a bad job to have.
Thanks, Jim. Brings back lots of memories of riding these on PAT in McKeesport and Pittsburgh in the 70’s and 80’s. One thing Mr. Staley lacked was a streetcar switch iron – about 4′ of steel rod, chiseled at one end with a loop handle at the other. There were hundreds of these lying around from the streetcar lines abandoned in the 50’s and 60’s, and the bus drivers used them as an effective robbery deterrent.
I wonder what the Systems Development Corporation did? Paul, do you know? Sounds like one of those fake company names from a Perry Mason episode.
Per Wikipedia, System Development Corporation in Santa Monica wrote computer software for defense systems in the 1950s and 1960s, before being taken over by other defense contractors. They are considered (per the Wiki) the first computer software company.
Southern California was just loaded with defense and aerospace work after WW2.
Thanks! Indeed, the rise and fall of Southern California’s defense and aerospace industry during the 20th century is a fascinating subject. This interactive timeline really puts it – and a lot of things about postwar LA in perspective:
I enjoyed the bus stopping in a line of 57-58 Mopars, including a 300 letter car.
Rode on a lot of Santa Monica Fishbowls as a kid. Took a few rides on the last one, #5180, before it was retired. Not much difference riding between an early 5303 or an 80’s vintage 5307. Front door wheelchair lift and the slightly more muffled sound of the turbocharged 6V-92 in the later coaches was about it.
The interesting Santa Monica transits to ride in were the AM Generals. Very loud, everything rattled, and in heavy rain rather wet inside.
The Chicago Transit Authority had hundreds of these.
They had all been equipped at Federal gummint insistence with air conditioning. Which never worked, because it was a retrofit job. And it included non-opening windows.
When the AC failed, and it always failed, the buses become rolling steam ovens.
So enterprising riders popped the emergency releases on the windows, which then were free to swing wildly. The busses would go down Lake Shore Drive with the windows banging one and shut. I never heard of anyone getting injured, but I’m sure there were incidents.
I don’t think so. First, the feds only subsidized equipment purchases, and didn’t mandate a/c. I know a number of cities that bought these with funds from the feds without a/c, including here in Eugene.
And these were not “retrofit” a/c systems. They were assembled on the line, and were for the most part quite reliable, given the times. Yes, they did fail occasionally.
And none of these buses had non-operable windows. They were slidining windows, not out-swing windows. You’re thinking perhaps of the later GM RTS buses?
Paul, as a life long Chicaogan, AMcA’s post is mostly right. I don’t think the A/C was mandated but it never worked. I rode these buses as a teen and into my 20’s
The CTA ordered these buses without opening windows that was lightly tinted green. The heavy use of these Fishbowls and the Chicago passengers sort of unhinged the windows from the bottom. This caused the windows to swing back and forth and did provide some needed ventilation, or at least more so than the two push up things on the roof.
Somewhere late in their life, the early ’90s the CTA did retrofit some of the remaining buses with opening windows, but never fixed the A/C
Ok; I did a bit of Googling and you’re both right. The CTA must have made a special order, because I’ve never seen a fishbowl without the sliding windows. Totally crazy.
Yes, the a/c went out occasionally (not “It never worked”), but at least the windows opened quite far.
There was a growing concern about riders sticking their arms out and having them injured in case another large vehicle came by very close. Maybe the CTA had some bad experience with that.
When new, I rode the buses infrequently, when my mom would take me to the doctor. That particular route still used Flxible’s New Look buses, so I can’t say how well the GM’s Air worked when they were new.
Between 1972 and 1977 the CTA purchased over 1800 of these fishbowls and by the time I was a regular rider, the late 80s the Air did not work. The CTA was strapped for cash and these buses were already 10-15 years old at the time. Whether, they didn’t have the money to repair the systems or if they didn’t care I’m not sure.
I do know that they choose not to buy air conditioned buses in the late ’80s. The Flyer D900s and the MAN Americana’s did not have Air Condition The MAN Arctics did and the big order of Flexible Metros did include Air. They had no problems with those systems.
In New York City, I do seem to remember the buses having a/c, but mostly I remember sweating. The windows did slide open for ventilation, there were many rainy, steamy summer days when you didn’t care if you got wet sitting there. Many of the emergency releases were popped so the windows banged back and forth as the buses turned. A lot of the buses were dieing from a lack of TLC, but the city was pretty broke; the roads were a mess, abandoned cars were not removed and public trash cans overflowed. Things are a lot better now.
For what it’s worth, and that’s not much, as a high schooler in the early 90s I remember the CTA making a big deal of the fact that the bus system now was all A/C. I also remember riding a bunch of buses that were still hot as hell with no opening windows.
At least these days they’re all sorted out and you can’t open the windows but 98 times out of 100 you’re going to get a bus with working A/C.