Throwback: A Ride Aboard ex-MARTA 1972 Flxible New Look on Route 26 or 77 (circa Jan. 27th, 1986)

On a cold winter's morning, Miami's then-CBS affiliate WTVJ/channel 4 (today's NBC 6, not related to today's CBS 4) sent reporter Amy Huggins and crew to ride several Metrobus routes across the city, and talk to passengers about the quality of the service. All this, for a story for WTVJ's Sunday evening newsmagazine "Montage". This is one of the first rides they took, riding a bus going southbound on NW 7th Avenue into Downtown Miami in the morning.

I searched the Wolfson Archives, and the only "Montage" episode featuring a story about Metrobus that was presented in the wintertime, was episode 251A, airing on February 2, 1986. Sandwiched between a story on drag queens and another story on jugglers, is a segment called "Diary of A Mad Bus Rider", which examines how well, or not, MDTA's Metrobus system was working at the time. Sadly, it currently isn't digitized, so I can't quite confirm this, but every other aspect fits.

The timing for this was apropos, as the controversial (and ultimately disastrous) "Network '86" route redesign was less than 6 months from being implemented. It was the "Better Bus Network" of its time, loaded with hated route eliminations, truncations, reroutes and a complete wayfinding overhaul with numerous route renumberings/reletterings, on top of all that. Sound familiar? It killed ridership figures for a generation afterward. And yet, the dummies of 2023 thought it would be just amazing to do it all again, huh?

The week prior to February 2 that year featured one of the severest cold snaps South Florida had seen in quite some time, if ever. It was that same cold snap that directly led to the Challenger disaster just 5 days before. Thus, I think this footage, as well as others that I'll post later, were shot on and around the early parts of that week, I'm guesstimating the morning of Monday the 27th, if not the 28th itself.

The route is unclear, as NW 7th Avenue was covered by both the 26 and the 77 at the time, both of which had short turns in the Opa-Locka area (rendering the "short route" paper sign in the windshield of little help). The 26 was eliminated by Network '86. The bus itself is unclear also, but it is a Flxible New Look with standee windows (that's the narrow strip of glass running above the main windows). Only 1260-1293 had those, they were 1972 models that were new to MARTA in Atlanta, of which MDTA purchased 34 of in 1983, operating them in service until 1987. MDTA's other Flx New Looks all came with rooftop "Bus-o-Rama" ("Batwings") advertising panels, and thus lacked standee windows.

This is part 1 of 3. Enjoy!!! And be sure to visit www.wolfsonarchives.org to find an absolutely priceless treasure trove of archived local news footage and other lovely things.