CTA Bus Garage Rosters

[Bus1883]

3 hours ago, Sam92 said:

Nice pic! Wasnt there a 5300 being used by the police? Whatever happened with that? 

Yes it was 5678, as it is currently still at SS with a dead engine 

[YoungBusLover]

5 hours ago, Sam92 said:

Nice pic! Wasnt there a 5300 being used by the police? Whatever happened with that? 

#5678 was used from I wanna say late 2006 all the way until 2017 or so before the motor died on it. It's scrap at this point unless the frame hasn't rotted on it by now.

[Erin Mishkin Jr.]

#1050 transmission has already broke and sounds like #1016 or #1040 now

[79th to lakefront 1302]

1204 transmission broke it sounds like 1240 but better 1240 sounds horrible 

[Javi75]

Is it too early in bus swaps to make an updated bus garage roster sheet? It’s looking like the 1000s are somewhat back to dominating the streets again system wide. They’ve had a heavier presence on C & K routes lately compared to 2 years ago. Early in the 8350s deployments I thought CTA was going to condense the 1000s to just four garages. I based that off of 6400s retirements & how l car fleets are shifted when new l cars are deployed. Would that have operationally made sense to condense the 1000s to a few garages rather spreading them evenly across all 7? 

[Sam92]

2 hours ago, Javi75 said:

Is it too early in bus swaps to make an updated bus garage roster sheet? It’s looking like the 1000s are somewhat back to dominating the streets again system wide. They’ve had a heavier presence on C & K routes lately compared to 2 years ago. Early in the 8350s deployments I thought CTA was going to condense the 1000s to just four garages. I based that off of 6400s retirements & how l car fleets are shifted when new l cars are deployed. Would that have operationally made sense to condense the 1000s to a few garages rather spreading them evenly across all 7? 

Spreading them across all 7 would be better. If there's more of them at a garage that would force the older equipment to work throughout the day vs pulling in and getting the extra attention they require. Spreading them out makes it so you'd only need them in busier times thus they'd get that extra maintenance their age requires. 

[Busjack]

5 hours ago, Javi75 said:

Is it too early in bus swaps to make an updated bus garage roster sheet? It’s looking like the 1000s are somewhat back to dominating the streets again system wide. They’ve had a heavier presence on C & K routes lately compared to 2 years ago. Early in the 8350s deployments I thought CTA was going to condense the 1000s to just four garages. I based that off of 6400s retirements & how l car fleets are shifted when new l cars are deployed. Would that have operationally made sense to condense the 1000s to a few garages rather spreading them evenly across all 7? 

 

3 hours ago, Sam92 said:

Spreading them across all 7 would be better. If there's more of them at a garage that would force the older equipment to work throughout the day vs pulling in and getting the extra attention they require. Spreading them out makes it so you'd only need them in busier times thus they'd get that extra maintenance their age requires. 

I believe someone cited the service standards on this point a couple of days ago. Anyway, they say "CTA's vehicle assignment policy is ... to maintain a uniform vehicle age by fleet size across all garages in the system." Searching back, there seems to be a number of violations of this policy, but the policy would seem to call for about 75 1000s per garage, with possibly some variations due to artics.

Thus, despite what Huberman did with Archer way back when, there now isn't any intent to make one garage "all NF" or "all Nova." Even if, as @Sam92 said about at the end of the Dan Ryan project, FG became all 6400s, by the time the first rehabs of 1000s was completed, FG had 1000s, just in small groups. If the second round of rehabs is completed and the 150 hybrids arrive, we'll have to see how it sorts out. But the people who said that NP was not getting Novas turned out to be wrong. 

[Busjack]

8 hours ago, Bus1883 said:

I mean it looks like the contract probably ended to send the buses to scrap Metal services LLC, that’s where some of the 6400s and 800s ended up, however there is bidding from time to time it depends but it is a lengthy process. All of the 9 800s were snatched away in early 2024 while I did manage to catch #805 get towed away by the wrecker. #905 is the only DE40LF left on CTA property that’s still back there stripped of everything into a shell. When CTA retired the Flxibles, RTSs, the original D40LFs and the NABIs they were gone almost expeditiously before 2013. There’s around 10 Flxibles still up there rotted up.

You stated this well. I'll add

• I don't know if NITA affects this, but probably not.
• The process for a scrapping contract is not that complicated. CTA advertises up to (for example) 400 buses at plus or minus an index for scrap steel per pound, the scrapper to weigh the buses and tow them off the property. For instance a February 2023 ordinance authorized the sale of 100 rapid transit cars to Scrap Metal Services for scrap, and another one of April 2025 another 200.
• The 2025 Transit Asset Management Plan has:

• So, theoretically, the 6400s and 200 1000s are off the books and 280 buses are on LTH.  Should be only 500-550 1000s left. And the 280 LTHs should, for the most part, be gone.

[YoungBusLover]

1 hour ago, Busjack said:

You stated this well. I'll add

• I don't know if NITA affects this, but probably not.
• The process for a scrapping contract is not that complicated. CTA advertises up to (for example) 400 buses at plus or minus an index for scrap steel per pound, the scrapper to weigh the buses and tow them off the property. For instance a February 2023 ordinance authorized the sale of 100 rapid transit cars to Scrap Metal Services for scrap, and another one of April 2025 another 200.
• The 2025 Transit Asset Management Plan has:

• So, theoretically, the 6400s and 200 1000s are off the books and 280 buses are on LTH.  Should be only 500-550 1000s left. And the 280 LTHs should, for the most part, be gone.

At the moment we're down to 620 #1000s most of which are 1st and 2nd options now, the insight I was given on the scrapping process a few weeks ago at SS is the value of scrap for a bus isn't what it once was maybe 10 - 15 years ago. So now they're trying to source a bidder that would be willing to tow and scrap all of this retired equipment for less than pennies on the dollar, As we all know CTA wants whatever money they can squeeze as much extra money out of there fleets post retirement but the value isn't worth it to scrappers anymore to even do business. Fiber glass isn't worth squat among rusted out steel frames.