NOVA Bus Revamp

[busfan4022]

6462 has been rehabbed and now features all new seating featured on the 4000 series (stimulus funded). On another ote I rode a NOVA on the #80 and it had luggage racks installed.

[Kevin]

#6462 has had those seats for a number of years as a test. Same with the bus with luggage racks.

[busfan4022]

Until recently have all the seats been updated. Before only four seats were featured.

[Amtrak41]

Assume hypothetically that the NABI buses were a success and running, yet Doomsday happened anyway. Would these low-floor Novas be mothballed at Archer (being the oldest in the fleet), rather than getting a makeover as now ?

Perhaps a few of the Flxibles, rather than the RTS's, would have been sent elsewhere in Illinois for continued service, otherwise all scrapped by now.

[sw4400]

Assume hypothetically that the NABI buses were a success and running, yet Doomsday happened anyway. Would these low-floor Novas be mothballed at Archer (being the oldest in the fleet), rather than getting a makeover as now ?

No. Some routes are too small, either road-wise or passenger-wise to merit use of a 60' bus, when a 40' bus would've sufficed. If the NABI's were still in service, we probably wouldn've ordered the 58 buses we have now from New Flyer(4150-4207). The Flxibles would've been mothballed, as the NOVA's are only 8-9 years old, respectively, and the FTA requires them to be in service for a minimum of 12 years.

[sw4400]

and it had luggage racks installed.

I must be oblivious to these luggage racks. Anyone got a photo to show of them?

[rmadisonwi]

Normally, I don't like "what-if" speculation that assumes some major event in the past didn't happen, yet everything subsequent still did happen. That said, I'll throw in my few cents anyway.

If the NABIs had been "good" (or, at the very least, halfway decent enough to continue to run for 12 years), then the initial 150-bus order for DE60LFs would have replaced a number of 6000s (I think it was around 200 or 225 buses...something to that effect). The 58-bus order was planned anyway, and would have represented the start of the BRT fleet (and, for you foamers out there, the info I had indicated that they would be numbered in the 9000 series, and would have been DE60LFRs). Of course, if we assume that Chicago still would have lost the BRT money (and that's likely to have been the case, since the city's incompetence was not directly impacted by the NABI problems), then it's anyone's guess whether or not the 58 buses (which then became stimulus buses) would have still been delivered, retiring another 60-70 6000s. My guess is, probably (after all, a new bus is generally better than a 15-year-old one that you want to retire anyway).

If the NABIs had been reliable and not so damn expensive to maintain, then the CTA would have saved a bunch of money in operating costs last year by widening headways and converting routes such as 22, 66, 151, etc. to all-artic. That savings would have enabled less stealing from capital to cover operating (which, thus, would have enabled more of said capital to be used to cover operating this year, and therefore, reducing the severity of the cuts). Alternately, some of those savings could have been put into rehabbing the Novas (and don't ask, as I have no knowledge at all of the actual plans or the status of the supposed Nova rehab).

Any remaining 6000s would definitely have been parked by February, but that would only have been 40-50 buses, as everything else would have been retired and replaced with artics. I don't know how you would handle service cuts this large with a fleet of <12-year-old buses, but I'm sure that the answer would lie in increasing the spare ratio somewhere (and, perhaps, not doing the Nova rehabs once you see what's coming, and saving up some of that money). I'd like to say that the Novas would then be relegated to just tripper work, but CTA apparently has never heard of the concept of using your oldest buses sparingly, as you had garages running TMCs and 6000s on owl runs just 2-3 years ago (74th) while other garages were filled with newer buses (Archer), but that's a completely different discussion and not really on point of this topic.

So, you'd see somewhat of a fleet reduction (again, through increasing your spare ratio), but because you'd still have some money saved up from the operation of artics vs. 40-footers last year, then this year's cuts wouldn't have had to be quite as bad. Plus, the decision to retire the 6000s as part of the service cuts was made prior to and independent of any decisions on what the service levels should be, and long before CTA actually knew how many buses would be needed. Part of the reason so many routes are mixed up between garages during rush hour was because of the need to meet an absolute cap on the peak vehicle requirement because there was absolutely no way at all that any 6000s were going to be kept around. That was the directive.

So, with a larger fleet of buses that have to be kept around (about 2000 buses), Archer probably would have had to be kept open. That, or you'd have some seriously extreme overcrowding at the remaining garages (not that you don't already).