Talk:Trolleybuses in Seattle

Dominant, or even common, terms can not be determined by point cites of usage.

...especially when some of the cites are "telegraphic" writing as seen in headlines. Anmccaff (talk) 14:22, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

A trolleybus in Seattle with the words "Electric Trolley" at rear.

My response would be that the term is in such common use that when purchasing a new fleet a few years back, King County Metro had the word "Electric Trolley" painted on the side of each and every coach. The only reason why I think this is an interesting point to put into the article is that different cities use different terms. For example, Bostonians and Philadelphians call their trolleybuses "trackless trolleys." That said... if you know a way to compare the usage levels of various terms, I'd love to have some data for this conversation. --RickyCourtney (talk) 19:38, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Hmmmm...while I've long suspected there was something in the water there, are you seriously suggesting that the average Seattlite is so far gone that he has to be told the Big Box on Wheels is a Bus?

I've lived in or near, or visited extensively, all of North America's trackless trolley cities except Philladelphia. (Been there, but mostly passing through.) In Dayton in the early '80s, "trackless trolley" was still the default. It was still accepted (but not current) then in SF. In the late 80s in Seattle, it was a shibboleth to the drivers, even though the guy in charge (and still in charge until quite recently, IMS) was a confirmed "trolley coach" man. In '99, every driver I spoke to there used "trackless", but that could be because they were all my age or older...which is, of course a real part of the problem. People codeshift, and a driver might adjust what he calls the thing based on whether he's talking to someone young or old, coworker or passenger or foamer.

What we can do, though, is compare newspaper cites, I've run the Globe, the Times/PI, the LA Times and the Tribune. "Trolleybus" as a single word is extremely thin on the ground. When I'm near the results again, I'll post them here. Anmccaff (talk) 20:52, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I lived in Seattle for several years in the 1980s, and I never once heard a Metro driver use the term "trackless" in reference to these vehicles. I have reinstated the sentence with a revised wording that now only calls "trolley" a "common alternative term" in Seattle. That is less accurate than the previous wordings, but it should satisfy. It's vague enough – doesn't say or imply that it is the most common local term, even though it probably is – and so the citations already provided are sufficiently supportive. The latter include one from the trolleybus system's own operator (Metro). The newspaper articles, which I chose for use here only out of convenience, their having already been cited elsewhere in the article, use the term "trolley" repeatedly throughout, not just in the headline, by the way. But yes, they are only examples of usage, hence the change to a less precise wording for the sentence in the article's lead.

Last, although this talk page is not the place for a general (not just Seattle) discussion of alternatives for the term trolleybus, the following tool may be of interest: Google Books Ngram Viewer. However, it cannot be limited to one geographical area (as far as I know), so there's no way to apply it just to Seattle. SJ Morg (talk) 09:49, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

As I said, people code-shift; the word someone used to one person isn't always the word used to another, sometimes based on as little as an accent. That code-shifting makes it very, very hard to tell what words are in greatest currency.

Were the article to say "in recent years, many Seattlites simply call these vehicles buses or trolleys, Metro itself described a buy of BIGNUM vehicles...." that'd be one thing - and probably fairly accurate, but the current versions gloss over past usage -and fairly recent past usage, and also gloss over the fact that usage changes because of alternate meanings. Edmonton dropped the "trackless" and the "bus/coach" from general usage quite quickly; that was because there was no other type of "trolley" operating to confuse it with. Yup, with the waterfront car no longer operating, and the new streetcars not yet in service, there was less potential ambiguity for a while. That's changed, and usage is likely to change with it.

Yeah, I'm familiar with ngrams...and also with their limitations. For instance, an apparent spike in "trolleybus" usage cones down to 18 documents over a decade, all but one of which are British, Continental, or Comecon - hardly convincing, that. (it also picks up cites for "trolley-buses", which creates inaccuracy and overlap.) As I mentioned, I've mined the whole of the SeaTimes archive; I'll post the results next time I have it handy.

Different usage over time is important to capture, since any term given extra weight will lead to tendentious searches. Anmccaff (talk) 15:03, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I just don't buy your repeated assertions regarding the use of the terms trackless trolley and trolley in Seattle. I have seen no evidence that the term trackless trolley was ever in widespread use in Seattle, and you have not provided any evidence. Meanwhile, the term "trolley" has been in widespread use in Seattle (in reference to trolleybuses) since the 1970s or earlier, well over half of the system's history, at least – not just "recent years". Also, I have been following Dayton's, San Francisco's and Edmonton's trolleybus systems closely since the 1980s (via both personal contacts, and newspaper articles and books), and in all three cities the term "trackless" has been almost non-existent during those 3 decades, while in Dayton "trolley" was a fairly common term for trolleybus (though not nearly as common as in Seattle, or as common as "trolley bus") – directly the opposite of your claims. Edmonton even has a group named the Edmonton Trolley Coalition (whose name refers to trolleybuses), while Dayton had the "Save Our Trolleys" group for several years in the 1980s and 1990s when the Dayton trolleybus system was under threat of closure. Sure, terminology can change over time (witness the disappearance of "trolley coach", which was the most common term outside the Eastern U.S. for many years, but nowadays is almost completely unused except in San Francisco), but you keep asserting things that I feel are not true – about the term "trackless", especially. On that basis, you (Anmcaff) don't have a lot of credibility in my book. At least I have provided some citations of reliable sources to support the text I added. All you have provided is personal observations. SJ Morg (talk) 10:17, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

You have seen no evidence that the term trackless trolley was ever in widespread use in Seattle,? Two minutes at the Times historical archive (1895–1984) would disabuse you of this problem. For "trackless trolley" we get 1,178 cites, "trolley bus" gets 311, "trolleybus"....19. Now, "trolley coach" comes in at 1,433; a real, but hardly overwhelming, preference. Anmccaff (talk) 15:11, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

If we're going to bring The Times archive in, let's at least use the combined historic and modern archives available to Seattle Public Library card holders. According to my count (using only news articles, removing real estate listings, Metro legal notices, etc.), "trackless trolley" gets used a handful (less than 10) times since 1985, mostly to describe the MEHVA historic bus excursions. "Trolleybus" gets used five times, including in coverage of the 2010 network proposal and the 2016 launch of new trolleybuses. "Trolley bus" gets used 82 times, while a mix of trolley and bus (usually trolley as a standalone) is used over 400 times. In my opinion, trackless trolley should only be used to describe the 1940s launch of the system, but be replaced with use of "trolley" and "trolley bus" (to differentiate from the modern streetcar system, also known as the "trolley") for anything modern. SounderBruce 02:17, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

That might be a nice approach in a forum where everyone currently lived in Seattle; here, I ain't so sure. Aside from that, though, notice that the second generation '80s (Lasnerian) equipment is described as...well, good place for a quote For three decades, mechanics at King County Metro Transit kept their aging fleet of 1980s-vintage trackless trolleys alive by mixing, rebuilding and cannibalizing parts. Anmccaff (talk) 05:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

The article you're quoting uses pretty much every term discussed, with no clear preference. Just saying. SounderBruce 05:14, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Au contraire, (Snape-a-doodle?). It specifically contrasts old vehicles (trackless trolleys) with new ones (trolley buses.) I suspect you'd be able to find the exact same contrasting in the late seventies and early eighties. Anmccaff (talk) 05:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

No one in Seattle calls these trolleys or trolleybuses. They are merely referred to as buses. Source: living there for 10 years and riding those buses daily. The sources in this article given for that nomenclature are 1) old, and 2) technical. If you started talking about a "trolleybus" to someone in Seattle, even while sitting in one, they'd think you were referring to an old-fashioned trolley with bright red paint, open windows, and a quaint bell ringing as it slowly rolls along a scenic route while filled with tourists. The reference to what what these buses are "commonly" called in Seattle needs to be removed, as the cited sources to do not support that claim and reality actively contradicts it.86.83.81.68 (talk) 09:16, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Seconding what 86.83.81.68 said. I'm 18 and have lived in Seattle proper my whole life. Not once have I heard the buses referred to as trolleys, not to mention that the cited sources for the sentence about common vernacular are grossly outdated in the case of two of them, and most likely technical/official in the case of the third. TheWombatQueen (talk) 01:17, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I lived in Seattle for several years in the 1980s, and at that time trolleys was a very common term for these vehicles, and that explains its frequent use at that time by local newspapers, whose editors try to reflect common terminology used by the public. Perhaps usage has changed since then, but friends of mine who still live in Seattle still refer to these vehicles as "trolleys" more than any other term, and Metro still routinely refers to them as such. As to calling them simply buses, yes of course that's what the general public calls them in situations where there is no need to distinguish between different types of buses, but that situation does apply here, in an article dealing only with this specific type of bus. SJ Morg (talk) 05:50, 20 May 2020 (UTC)