English?? with pleasure!
The guy from Dan was giving you 'spin;- i.e. all european engine bus and lorry manufecturers offer their product with Euro4 standard, simply because this is what is required by law. by default, the same standards are offered to non Europeans too- whether they like it or not! Citaros and Mans- old and ancient rivalry; it has been tranferred to Israel in 1978 when Egged chose Mercedes and Dan went for Man. The fact is that Mercedes has been far more successful as far as exports and number of chassis produced is concerned. When a bus company purchases a large number of buses, the terms and prices of the buses can be , and really are different from case to case. In the case of London, Mercedes offered a big discount on bus price, because the bus companies went for a deal when they also outscored the maintanance and extended warrenty to Mercedes too. GPS: the system is really designed to enable better control of service quality- i.e. that buses are run on time and do not bunch up. the route controller is able to send msgs to the bus driver, and regulate the service quality. of course you can display information at bus stops internet and mobile phone, but primarily it is meant for the bus company. I can not see Dan [or Egged] doing this sort of thing, so it's like buying a computer soley to add or subtract numbers - a job that can be done more simply on calculators. the Red colour: adise Dan to read some London Transport history. between 1912 and 1929, London General excperimented with bus colours, and red was the optimal colour in terms of recognision, maintanace, colour blindness, adverts and the like. Spin is a term that is used over here to describe a politician telling a story - way and out of proportion to the truth. Looks like your man from Dan was doing the same!! translations from Evyatar! regards Yoram.
