On this page, you can view summaries of the latest updates to this website, sorted by date. Updates are displayed in reverse chronological order with the most recent at the top of this page.

I've introduced a new feature: Daily Photos. This section will display the latest transit (and possibly other) photos added to this website, sorted by date. I may remove this section if it doesn't quite work out, but for the time being, 45 new photos have been added as of June 15, 2010.

I've added a new transit photo set for the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority (SRTA), a somewhat obscure transportation agency operating bus service in the cities of Fall River and New Bedford, Massachusetts, with 21 new photos.

For this update, I've rebuilt the Foothill Transit section and added 50 images, some from the archive, some taken relatively recently. All of the existing images in the photo subsets have been reprocessed and retouched as well.

Realizing that the "articles" and "photo essays" sections on this website seem to convey the same material, I've decided to merge them. The "articles" section will be eliminated and all articles will be moved to the "photo essays" section. The Hong Kong Transport Timeline page has been eliminated as a result of this reorganization, as I don't have any photos to go along with that article.

As I'm back in New York for the time being, I've had the chance to take a look at the newest vehicles in the New York MTA's fleet: the new NovaBus LFS articulated low-floor buses, currently running on the Bx12 Select Bus Service and the M15 routes. These are the first low-floor three-door articulated buses purchased by the MTA as well as the first articulateds acquired since the year 2004, and they look sharp indeed. To document these new additions to the fleet I present the following new transit photo set:

• Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA Regional Bus Operations) - NovaBus LFS Artic, with 16 new photos.

Having recently completed my fifth complete cross-country voyage by car, I've had the chance to visit some new states and get to know areas of the country I've never visited before. As usual, I've got a number of new transit photos taken along the way.

I've added the following new transit photo sets:

• Central Arkansas Transit Authority (Little Rock, Arkansas), with 8 photos;
• DART First State (State of Delaware), with 14 photos;
• Knoxville Area Transit (Knoxville, Tennessee), with 17 photos;
• Memphis Area Transit Authority (Memphis, Tennessee), with 3 photos; and
• Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority (Nashville, Tennessee), with 26 photos;

I've also updated the following transit photo set:

• DASH (Alexandria, Virginia), with 19 new photos.

Scroll down for other updates I've made during this trip, in case you've missed them. The Metro Transit (Oklahoma City), Mountain Line (Arizona), and Tulsa Transit photo sets are completely new, while the ABQ RIDE and MTA Maryland photo sets both have had a number of new photos added.

Out of all the new transit agencies I've encountered on this trip, the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) stood out as clearly being the worst. Even for a Sunday, there was hardly any transit service in operation for this city of 670,000 residents. The central transit terminal was completely deserted except for a few "transients" and MATA's beautifully-restored historic streetcars were running empty up and down Main Street. I usually try to remain objective in my documentation of public transit, but this egregious example of public transit that doesn't work needed to be mentioned.

The Nashville MTA was an impressive case. I arrived in the Music City shortly after it had been devastated by serious flooding the week before. Yet a short walk around downtown Nashville revealed that the city had rebounded mightily and virtually no trace of the flood was visible. Usually, flooding can inflict serious damage on transit agencies' facilities and equipment, and I expected that MTA service would be limited. But there were dozens of buses buzzing about downtown -- on a Sunday, mind you -- and transit service was only minimally impacted by the floods.

Updated the following transit photo set:

• MTA Maryland, with 50 new photos.

Added the following new transit photo sets:

• Metro Transit (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), with 14 photos (not to be confused with Metro Transit in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota); and
• Tulsa Transit (Tulsa, Oklahoma), with 8 photos.

And updated the following transit photo set:

• ABQ RIDE, with 16 new photos.

Added the following new transit photo set:

• Mountain Line (Flagstaff, Arizona), with 6 photos (not to be confused with Mountain Line in Missoula, Montana.)

Added a new photo essay:

• San Diego Steam Special, with 20 photos.

Updated the following transit photo sets:

• Los Angeles Metro - NABI 42-BRT Hybrid, with 4 new photos; and
• Pasadena Area Rapid Transit System, with 8 new photos.

Updated the following transit photo set:

• Norwalk Transit District, with 2 new photos.

Updated the following transit photo set:

• Culver Citybus, with 3 new photos.

Added the following new transit photo set:

• Citybus (Hong Kong, China), with 109 photos.

And updated the following transit photo sets:

• Big Blue Bus, with 27 new photos; and
• Montebello Bus Lines - Gillig LF, with 2 new photos.

Updated the following transit photo sets:

• Montebello Bus Lines, with 17 new photos; and
• Norwalk Transit, with 2 new photos.

Added the following new transit photo set:

• Los Angeles Metro - NABI 31-LFW CNG, with 2 photos.

Updated the following transit photo sets:

• Antelope Valley Transit Authority, with 1 new photo; and
• Los Angeles Metro - NABI 42-BRT Hybrid, with 2 new photos.

Added 5 new photos to the Los Angeles Union Station photo essay.

Rebuilt the Glendale Beeline transit photo set and added 5 new photos.

Added the following new transit photo set:

• Long Win Bus (Hong Kong, China), with 22 new photos.

Reopened the aviation photography section with 49 photos.

Added a new photo essay:

• Westlake, Los Angeles, with 13 photos.

Added the following new transit photo set:

• East Los Angeles Shuttle ('El Sol'), with 2 new photos.

Updated the following transit photo sets:

• Foothill Transit - NABI 42-BRT CNG, with 3 new photos; and
• Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority, with 16 new photos. (I've also replaced a few old images.)

I've also made some changes to the website's main stylesheet.

Added a new photo essay:

• Regional Transit Service, with 27 photos.

Revamped the following transit photo sets:

• Antelope Valley Transit Authority
• Victor Valley Transit

And added a new photo essay:

• Los Angeles Union Station, with 3 photos.

Added the following new transit photo set:

• Foothill Transit - NABI 42-BRT CNG, with 2 photos.

I've also rebuilt the Foothill Gillig Phantom set with the Lightbox image viewer standard on new sets.

Added the following new transit photo sets:

• Bi-State Development Agency - Metro St. Louis (St. Louis, Missouri), with 11 photos;
• Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (Kansas City, Missouri), with 12 photos; and
• Madison County Transit (Madison County, Illinois), with 3 photos.

Updated the following transit photo set:

• ABQ RIDE, with 11 new photos.

Added a new photo essay:

• Garden of the Gods, with 8 photos.

Added the following new transit photo sets:

• IndyGo (Indianapolis, Indiana), with 13 photos; and
• Topeka Transit (Topeka, Kansas), with 9 photos.

Having finally begun to add transit photos from my trip to Hong Kong last year, I present the following new set:

• Mass Transit Railway (MTR), with 116 photos.

Some extraneous information on the About set has been removed. The simpler, the better.

I've also made a few minor changes to the website's stylesheet and corrected some coding errors on some sets (most notably, the sets in the WMATA section); this will, hopefully, make the website easier to view.

Greetings all, and welcome to Version 2 of www.rmcconnell.com. Featuring such new amenities as...

• A redesigned user-interface that's less image-dependent. Previously, I had used images to display the website's headers and other text. I realized that this had two adverse effects: (1) longer loading time for some users, and (2) difficult to search the text of the site because what appeared to be "text" was, for the most part, not actual text -- just a picture of text. This new interface should rectify these problems to some extent.
• (Re)introduction of PHP pages. On the latest version of my previous website, The Bergen Network, I had used the PHP programming language for the majority of pages, allowing myself greater coding flexibility with the website's look and feel. This isn't much of a change for the website's viewer, but it makes things easier and more flexible for me.
• Improved image viewing. I've installed the Lightbox image viewer on certain newer photo sets. This allows for me to add a caption to each image without the caption taking up valuable space on the page. This will be implemented site-wide on a gradual basis.
• Random image generators on certain transit photo sets. Feel free to hit your browser's "refresh" button as many times as you wish!
• New transit photo sets. 107 new transit photos from mainland China, and soon, many more from Hong Kong. I've also added a section for non-transit photo essays to be greatly expanded in the future.

I have, however, omitted several things from the previous version of this site:

• The "MW CODE" font. As I've created a new, text-based interface for the new version of this website, I haven't been able to use Hiroki Tanaka's excellent MW CODE font. The lack of lowercase letters in the font was a limitation, though, which was one of the reasons why almost all of the text on the previous site was in all-caps. That being said, enjoy the new font: Helvetica (if you've got a Mac) or Arial (ugh.) (I may try to find an alternative for Arial, as I cannot stand that font -- but Helvetica only comes with Macs.)
• The journal. I've tried countless times to start and actually update a blog regularly, and although I've created each blog successfully, I consistently fail to update it even semi-religiously. This one is no different from previous attempts, so I've deleted it from the site. On the plus side, this should end the barrage of spam comments that the blog generates on a daily basis. I'll continue, however, to post updates to this website on this set.

With that out of the way, please enjoy this new website. If you should feel the need, send me an e-mail via the address at the bottom of this set.

New transit photo sets added as of this update are listed below:

• China Motor Bus, with 5 photos;
• Shanghai Bus, with 78 photos;
• Shanghai Maglev Train, with 2 photos;
• Shanghai Metro, with 18 photos; and
• Zhangjiang Tram, with 9 photos.