weird sound as electric buzzing sound?

It's kind of a jetsons-car noise, with a lot of strange harmonies in the lower registers. Some of the buses make the noise and some are pretty much silent, the drivers call the noisy ones "growlers."

Interesting. O_o and I just saw the last pic you posted in someone's comment...that's A LOT of wires.

They had those in San Francisco. but I have been gone for a long time and do not know if they are still there.

Yes, they still do, except routes that go places there is no way to hang the tracks for them...

Ours aren't quite as colorful, though, just a dull gray.

They were dull gray and fog yellow 35 years ago.

Seattle buses were boring until we painted them all turquoise and gold.

So... They have your city streets rigged up like bumper cars? I'd imagine those would be incredibly limited in where they can go.

The buses are powered by overhead wires. As they rearrange the routes they can put new ones up in very short order, but old ones don't get taken down in case they'll need them again.

http://artsofar.org/wires.jpg
http://artsofar.org/wires2.jpg
http://artsofar.org/switchgrid.jpg

I'm imagining though the place eventually looking like it was overrun with giant mechanical spiders.
Actually looks kind of nice. Though problematic for the avian population.

Only on streets frequented by buses. And we only have thirty electric routes, the rest are diesel. Electric buses are used on routes with a lot of steep hills, a lot of the hills in Seattle are too steep for diesel buses to climb, only the electric buses can make it.

That's pretty cool. I passed through this one street in Toronto overrun by electric wires. It's certainly very different.

We used to have a few of those in Philly. Not a huge fan of the ugly overhead wires, but I'll take electric power over diesel anyday.

I like the overhead wires.

When did you take this? I mighta' been on one of those...

About a month ago.

Hey I recognize those! ^_^ In fact I think I used to work in one of those buildings you see in that shot. :)

Woah ive never seen electric buses before! They look so weird!

We've been using them since the 1940s. They last a very long time, the ones you see here are from 1985, we just retired a fleet dating back to 1960. And that's just the bodies, (which last longer than the same bodies with diesel engines due to the lack of vibration,) we don't know how long the engines last, we've been using the same General Electric engines since 1940, they just get put in new bodies every twenty years.

wow really? I thought they was a brand new sort of thing.

i miss the sixties ones, theyre still at the airport road base, with one of two from the forties.. also, me and you should completely go on a photo day one of thedse days, going all over seattle to take pictures. i fiund a couple neat abandoned places if you wanted to do that too!

Extra spiffy, I don't get to do much abandoned building exploration. We should totally do that.

Fisher Flour Mill over on Harbor Island is abandoned, and noone has been caught there in the eight or so years it's been abandined! it;s also a mishmash of every architecture stuyle fromk around here since 1918

Awesome. We should do that after I set up my new apartment.

note me for my number if you need help moving man, i'll be up there, it on ly costs me 50 cents to get there on the bus

It's sort of like an invasion or a parade and that in itself makes me both afraid and amused of the Trolley Bus.

I know in many places beautiful old wooden trams were BURNED in favour of the new-fangled Trolley Bus which was simply criminal, especially since in the UK the Trolleys were found to be next to useless on our road network and were soon replaced by more conventional, combustion engine buses.

Ah well, we have the Super Tram now instead in Sheffield which I suppose is better than nothing.

No no no you've got it all wrong. In America sometime around 1939 General Motors bought all the trams, remember? They tore up the tracks and tried to sell us gasoline-powered buses, in most of the cities around the country it worked and G.M. sold millions of buses but we said "fuck you" and bought General Electric trolley buses instead.

I don't remember since I'm from the other side of The Pond ;) But good on you for shafting GM!