The Cult Of Trees Gets In The Way . . . Again

The good news is you get a view from above right down the avenue. The bad news is you have to cut back all those damn trees:

Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, said on Thursday that he is considering bringing the two-level buses back to Fifth Avenue.

Mr. Roberts said his interest was based on simple economics. Double-deckers can carry about as many people as the longer bus that the transit agency now uses, according to Joseph Smith, senior vice president for the agency’s bus operations. But they cost less to maintain because they lack the complicated connector and accordion apparatus that links the two portions of an articulated bus.

Those who rode the double-deckers in their heyday have fond memories.

“Back in the days when money was important, it was great to take a date out and you could have a nice ride up and a nice ride back on a summer evening,” said William J. Ronan, 95, who first rode the buses when he came to New York during his student days in the 1930s (three decades later, he became the first chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority).

“It was sort of a genteel way to travel and perfectly respectable,” he said. “Between that and the Staten Island Ferry you could have a wonderful date.”

Mr. Ronan said the seats in front on the upper deck were considered the best ones. “You tried to get up in the front seats, which were great because you had the view up the avenue,” he said.

. . .

Mr. Ronan tried to bring the double-decker buses back in 1976, when the transportation authority bought eight of them from a British company to be used in a pilot program. [Transit spokesman Charles F.] Seaton said the buses had mechanical problems and were off the road after about two years.

But there were other problems, including on the continuation of some Fifth Avenue routes where the buses travel along Riverside Drive.

“The problem then was all the trees along Riverside Drive had grown such that the branches were in the way of the bus,” said Robert A. Olmsted, who worked at the authority with Mr. Ronan. If the buses are brought back, he said, “they’d have to do some clearance runs and trim some trees, which may upset some people, too.”