Grande West Transportation Vicinity Bus

[Busjack]

Perusing Mass Transit Magazine, I came across a reference to Grande West Transportation, which could be a competitor to ENC for 30 foot Pace buses. Although a Canadian company, it says it has arrangements with a Buy America compliant manufacturer in Atlanta and an Altoona test report.

[andrethebusman]

Grande West is an outfit from near Vancouver BC. They have been fairly successful in selling their buses, mostly in western Canada, a few here and a few there. Their plan seems to be to get into the BC bus fleets, as BC Transit (rest of BC) has a history of buying oddball buses, such as the biggest North American fleet of Dennis Darts, and Trident double deckers

[Busjack]

What got me to this topic was a circuitous route to this article in Mass Transit that Hamilton Ont. was buying some.

However, some other things I saw on the Grande West site makes me wonder whether their buses would meet Pace specs, such as that the original plan was importing buses from China, and it wasn't clear whether the U.S. assembly point would be importing shells or kits (and hence we're back to the complaints about the Optimas). The Altoona report states that the bus would not get up 50 m.p.h. in one slalom test (which would preclude using them on a route such as 895) and that they do not have towing eyes, and the manufacturer recommended a flat bed truck.