Ich Bin Ein M4.(The Talk of the Town)(Mercedes-Benz Citaro)(Product/service evaluation)

Thar she blew, the lone Citaro, the elusive, ultralong, totally Teutonic Mercedes-Benz bendy bus that for the past month or so has been confounding riders on one of three routes all over town. Sleek and gray, glinting in the sun, it turned east off Amsterdam onto 125th Street and hissed to a stop, amid a muttering on the curb of "Wow"s and "What-the"s. Today, the Citaro was the M101, which runs down Lexington Avenue. The first passenger boarded, paying with an anachronistic fistful of nickels and dimes, and proceeded toward the stern. The seats were upholstered in an abstract blue pattern cribbed, maybe, from a stewardess's scarf. The hand-grip poles were bright orange. There were three--three!--side doors. And all the signs were in German: "Wagen halt," "Im Notfall 1. Griff in Pfeilrichtung drehen. 2. Tur offnen," "Bitte wahrend der Fahrt nicht mit dem Fahrer sprechen." This did not feel like New York, and so strangers freely exchanged opinions: "This is the way to travel, man." "It's two buses in one!" "What's that, German? Cover it up. I don't wanna see it."

So: Was ist der Bus? Or, rather: Was fur einen Bus ist das? New York City Transit has been subjecting the Citaro, which is big in Europe, to a forty-five-day test run to determine whether it can make it here. This prototype, then, was either a glimpse of our bus future or a one-time curiosity, a tourist in sandals and socks. The bus rides low, and it feels more spacious than the previous generation of articulated buses (the New Flyers, which, pulling into a stop behind the Citaro, suddenly look a little shabby, very American Century). And, as the driver remarked, when asked, in violation of the nicht sprechen rule, how it was to drive, "It's smooooth."

At Eighty-fifth and Lex, a man got on and sat in the seat by the front door. He had on a worn F.D.N.Y. cap, a windbreaker, black pants, and untied black sneakers. He began to talk very knowledgeably, in a Larry (Bud) Melman kind of voice, about upstate bus-assembly plants. Asked how he knew so much, he declared, with something like indignation, "I'm a photographer for National Bus Trader magazine." He explained that he'd been trying for three weeks to get a photograph of the bus, showing up at what he considered to ...