More Bus Moves

[jajuan]

On 11/19/2024 at 6:30 PM, Sam92 said:

Maybe not a tmc treatment. But maybe some sort of crackdown on keeping mileage low on the older buses such as only pulling them out for rush hours and short gentle routes at that. 

That's not really realistic when not all of them are going bye bye. Regardless of what interpretation some are putting into what looks like a new reluctance by CTA to do a second NF rebuild, there's no getting around at least 400 of the 1000s are sticking around given the 8350 total order was only up to 600 buses. Even if bus operations at CTA HQ did a spread them out among the garages approach, you're not going credibly park 400 buses for nothing more than rush hour work in a system as busy and extensive as CTA's without cutting into and hurting service levels. K and 103rd both have the least number of 1000s and still consistently put a big chunk of those that they have left out on the road for most of each service day. 

[Sam92]

1 hour ago, jajuan said:

That's not really realistic when not all of them are going bye bye. Regardless of what interpretation some are putting into what looks like a new reluctance by CTA to do a second NF rebuild, there's no getting around at least 400 of the 1000s are sticking around given the 8350 total order was only up to 600 buses. Even if bus operations at CTA HQ did a spread them out among the garages approach, you're not going credibly park 400 buses for nothing more than rush hour work in a system as busy and extensive as CTA's without cutting into and hurting service levels. K and 103rd both have the least number of 1000s and still consistently put a big chunk of those that they have left out on the road for most of each service day. 

That's why I said try to assign them to lighter used routes. We know they still have to be used what I'm saying is if they can do stuff like make certain routes Nova heavy (like FG with 56) why not do something with say 106, 59/55A/55N runs etc and try to assign NFs whenever possible to those routes?

[jajuan]

3 hours ago, Sam92 said:

That's why I said try to assign them to lighter used routes. We know they still have to be used what I'm saying is if they can do stuff like make certain routes Nova heavy (like FG with 56) why not do something with say 106, 59/55A/55N runs etc and try to assign NFs whenever possible to those routes?

And even that's still unrealistic to think that's all they would be used on when looking back at the history of the 6400s. When we look at how they were deployed when still at multiple garages, they weren't sidelined to rush only or lighter routes. They still popped up on the 8, 9, 55, 62, 63, 66, etc. during nonpeak hours before their final consolidation at FG that many of us highly criticized even as the 7900s rose to a significantly higher roster count. And the 6400s numbered less than what the 1000s are presumably to eventually drop down to. The main reason we saw them on the road less out of other garages was primarily because their counts had significantly decreased through retirement and displacement, not because they were being parked and sidelined. By the way, 59 is only lighter in terms of passenger count. It's not really light in terms of preserving mileage, which you're basing your point on given it's about the same length as 55 and 63 with its main route legs being between Stony Island and Cicero like those other two. There are just too few rush only routes/runs and shorter lighter load runs to consolidate 400 buses to especially with many traditionally and historically lighter routes seeing increases in ridership as ridership patterns in recent years have realigned to favor the crosstown routes, especially those located farther away from the downtown area, in addition the patterns showing increased nonpeak bus ridership as evidenced by smaller weekday midday and weekend headways and earlier weekend service starts for some routes and later service finishes on others.