New City Bus Tech to Cure Back Door Anxiety

There's nothing worse than being squished in the back of the crowded bus and just when your about to make your escape, the back doors fail.

The days of grappling with the rear exit of the bus may now be over thanks to sensors being equipped on new city buses.

When the bus stops, sensors will notice a passenger approaching the rear door and automatically open it.

"It's encouraging," Andrew Albert, a rider representative on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board told the Daily News. "If the sensors work and are not prone to failure it would be a great thing to speed up the boarding process."

The system is expected to be especially helpful for senior citizens, riders carrying packages and passengers with small children.

Malfunctioning components and vandalism often make the back doors on current buses hard to open.  The rear doors are opened by a compressed air system that is triggered when a rider pushes the yellow tape.  But pushing that tape never seems to work.

The first buses with the sensors are due in January.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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