New Express Routes Coming Soon.

[Pace831]

1 hour ago, busfan2847 said:

Are these new ones one door or two door?

6522 and above are regular transit buses. See the discussion and pictures starting here.

[busfan2847]

2 minutes ago, Pace831 said:

6522 and above are regular transit buses. See the discussion and pictures starting here.

 

Thanks.

[Pace831]

6560 deadheaded to River, not Dundee. I was lucky this one showed up on the tracker because deadheads usually don't anymore.

[BusHunter]

I forgot to mention #6560 has bright blue inserts like some of the CNG's did. They must have been pretty new to service. They didn't have any road salt on them yet. Maybe today was the first or second day of those. So i don't get it, if the highway buses are for the express what are the #6559's for? Nabi replacements? I think all highway buses are wrapped now because I didn't see one that wasn't in the whole rush period I was out there.

[west towns]

Usb ports are probably under the seat or in the wall

[BusHunter]

20 minutes ago, west towns said:

Usb ports are probably under the seat or in the wall

I looked and saw this black thing by the seat walls. Even took out my flashlight on my phone and examined it, but no it appears to be part of the bus. Unless somehow I'm missing it under the seat handles or something. i've always sat on the rear bench seat. i guess I'm going to have to nose around next time. Maybe if we're lucky they'll be a press conference and they'll show us where they are at.

Googling usb ports on the bus will find you this story of usb ports on an asian bus but i see nothing that elaborate.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/buses-with-usb-charging/3087788.html

MTA has a story about NF's that have usb ports and they seem to be in the ceiling.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mta-introduces-new-buses-wi-fi-usb-charging-ports-queens-article-1.2640648

 

[BusHunter]

Figured maybe you guys wanted to see the handout at Rosemont today so I scanned it over

pace express pg 1.pdf

pace express pg 2.pdf

pace express pg 3.pdf

pace express pg 4.pdf

A couple of interesting points it says on the handout #611 will be serviced with 15 passenger vans. So what it doesn't even get a paratransit?

They claim on page 4 that the pace operator can run in the regular traffic lanes and it's their discretion if they want to run in the flex lane. Like today for instance if you go out there on the Jane Addams snow is piled up along the Jersey barrier that divides the highway, so if enough snow comes down then that lane will be up to 1/4 blocked by snow which would put a question mark on the use of that lane, so I don't know what issues the lane will have in the snow. We shall see.

[Pace831]

6 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

Figured maybe you guys wanted to see the handout at Rosemont today so I scanned it over

You could have saved yourself the trouble. It's available on the Pace website.

8 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

A couple of interesting points it says on the handout #611 will be serviced with 15 passenger vans. So what it doesn't even get a paratransit?

It says "vehicle", not "van". Most paratransits have 15 seats.

[Busjack]

On the 610 map, 6391 is pulling into River, but the rest of the buses are 6507, 6563, 6497, and 6562.

Besides being an actual River (S. Elgin) route, do you think that it isn't part of the project because it won't pull into the Barrington Road station because it is off the tollway by then? Again, strange.

I guess we'll have to wait 5 days.

[Pace831]

8 hours ago, Busjack said:

Besides being an actual River (S. Elgin) route, do you think that it isn't part of the project because it won't pull into the Barrington Road station because it is off the tollway by then? Again, strange.

The passenger notice says "...will operate with new, modern buses that have Wi-Fi and USB charging ports... This service is part of the I-90 Market Expansion Project". So it is part of the project, the question is whether the 6560s will remain on this route when the new pick takes effect on the 19th. @BusHunter also noted that he didn't see any USB ports on the bus, and neither did I when I rode 6535 at SW.

My guess is that 610 will be run with all highway buses from Dundee. The 6560s will replace the 6600s currently used on 606. I don't have a guess where the 6600s will be moved to.

[Busjack]

17 minutes ago, Pace831 said:

My guess is that 610 will be run with all highway buses from Dundee. The 6560s will replace the 6600s currently used on 606.

The problem with the latter theory is that it appears from the route description that 606 will run out of NW, and thus it wouldn't make sense to send them to R. I believe that the advance schedule said that, but that link isn't working at the moment.

[Pace831]

Just now, Busjack said:

The problem with the latter theory is that it appears from the route description that 606 will run out of NW, and thus it wouldn't make sense to send them to R. I believe that the advance schedule said that, but that link isn't working at the moment.

The advance schedule for 606 has never worked. I had previously predicted that NW would get all of 606, but at the time I said that I had incorrectly predicted that R would have 604. We now have the advance info for 604, saying it will be operated by NW, but also appears to have interlines with 606. We won't know for sure 606 until the schedule comes our, but one clue is that the service hours shown in the handout are the same as the current ones. I'm thinking there won't be any significant changes to the schedule except for rush hour interlining with 604, which wouldn't affect the runs from River.

[BusHunter]

If you notice though #604 is a local route Wheeling to NWTC. This may be why nw is doing it. Anything on I-90 is probably going to be highway buses, so I'd say #603, #605, #606, #607, #610, #616 will all be highway buses just because they will be on I-90. I'm still trying to figure out the #6559's but maybe they will be for some of the newer local service like #550, although it may just need eldorko's. What we need to do is take a ride on a #6559's bus and see if it has usb's on it. Perhaps they could just be some extra highway buses to help fill in the gaps. Still though #895 is going to be the oddball in the flex lane. Probably if they didn't have extra highway buses they should have just let sw use the #6559's, but then again they have the #6523's. Still no usb's though. That should be standard on all future Pace purchases one would think. The wifi is on all the Axess'

[chgofan78]

Speaking of SW buses, with the spotting of 6559 and up, I'm curious if this means SW will have 6510 to 6558 minus 6513.  It's weird not seeing any 651X buses yet in service.

[busfan2847]

2 hours ago, chgofan78 said:

Speaking of SW buses, with the spotting of 6559 and up, I'm curious if this means SW will have 6510 to 6558 minus 6513.  It's weird not seeing any 651X buses yet in service.

Thought 6510-21 were Pulse buses for Pace Northwest?

[Pace831]

2 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Anything on I-90 is probably going to be highway buses, so I'd say #603, #605, #606, #607, #610, #616 will all be highway buses just because they will be on I-90.

Those routes will all be operated by River, so I agree with that.

2 hours ago, BusHunter said:

I'm still trying to figure out the #6559's but maybe they will be for some of the newer local service like #550

550 isn't a new service, the only change is that it will now pull in to the Randall Road Park n Ride. I wouldn't expect a big enough ridership increase to justify bigger buses on that route.

2 hours ago, chgofan78 said:

I'm curious if this means SW will have 6510 to 6558 minus 6513.

6510-21 were already determined to be for Pulse service starting next year.

[west towns]

Are there enough  express buses to run all new service 606 616 and 610?

[BusHunter]

7 hours ago, west towns said:

Are there enough  express buses to run all new service 606 616 and 610?

Should be. They have 20. They can do the 3 you mention no problem. The question is can they do the rest I mention like #607. #600 runs with about 3 or 4 buses max so it will be close. 

[BusHunter]

Currently in the peak of the rush between those 3 routes they have 11 buses. So they would have 9 to spare for the new service.

[Busjack]

3 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Should be. They have 20. They can do the 3 you mention no problem. The question is can they do the rest I mention like #607. #600 runs with about 3 or 4 buses max so it will be close. 

 

1 hour ago, BusHunter said:

Currently in the peak of the rush between those 3 routes they have 11 buses. So they would have 9 to spare for the new service.

Whatever they are doing next week with the 6560s, they have 25 buses (read the materials you scanned), so they aren't just for the 3 new routes, but undoubtedly also for 600, 616 (where they are used now), and probably 610. I don't think the federal government is going to pay for 25 buses just to have 14 spares (or a spare ratio of 56%),. So go back and redo your math

[Pace831]

Looking over the schedules, it looks like:

• 600 - 5
• 603/605 - 7
• 610 - 7

That's 19 buses, leaving 6 spares, which is a reasonable conclusion. Also supports the theory that the ~6569s are for 606.

[Busjack]

17 hours ago, Pace831 said:

Looking over the schedules, it looks like:

• 600 - 5
• 603/605 - 7
• 610 - 7

That's 19 buses, leaving 6 spares, which is a reasonable conclusion. Also supports the theory that the ~6569s are for 606.

One also has to consider Pace's practice of buses being cycled in and out of the garage during the day*, but we'll see on Monday.

_________

*And anticipated growth.

[west towns]

The in and out cycle is based on lower midday frequency of cource buses will go back to garage

[Busjack]

6559 on 606 per WebWatch.

And speaking of old garbage 6008 (first Orion VI I ever saw) on 600.

[busfan2847]

16 minutes ago, Busjack said:

6559 on 606 per WebWatch.

And speaking of old garbage 6008 (first Orion VI I ever saw) on 600.

Yes that is the oldest Orion in service.