What to Do With Surplus Artics

[jajuan]

On 7/2/2025 at 8:49 AM, artthouwill said:

I don't think the issue is turns.  More than likely the issue is efficiency.   The heaviest portion of the 36 is south of Diversey.  It is a supplement to the 22 which his the heavier route.  Therefore 40ft buses make more sense on the 36 because north of Diversey only requires a 40'.  The only way an artic makes the 36 is either a trip is part of a block run on an artic route, or a situation where a bus is needed and the immediate available bus is an artic.

@EasyMoney the width of the artics don't ilprohibit the use of artics on Broadway.  The street is NOT too narrow.  

I wasn't arguing for artics to be on the 36. I was just pointing out the flaws in EasyMoney's positions for why they don't get placed on the route very often. 

On 7/2/2025 at 2:04 AM, EasyMoney said:

I Work out of north park im just telling you what they tell me i been here for a year never seen a artic on the 36

As pointed out before me, low artic usage on the 36 is more a function of the ridership counts and patterns don't call for anything more than 40 foot buses. It has nothing to do with the width of the roadways that are part of the route, number of turns or even the tightness of turns. If any of those had any weight, we wouldn't see the high number of artics on the 22, 151 or any of the express routes assigned to North Park.

Yes you may be a bus operator working there, but as you mentioned that's been the case for a year. However, North Park has been my neighborhood area home garage for 15 years with another 15 added from having been a regular rider of North Park bus since my high school days. So I think I have a good amount of observational experience with how and why different bus types within its ever evolving roster have been deployed among its given slot of assigned routes over the years. I mention this not to flex, but to make the larger point that we all learn from each other here whether any of us be operators observing from the inside such as yourself or passengers observing things from the outside. Heck, a number of our operator members are operators because they joined our forum as teenagers and younger adults and the discussions we've had here sparked their desire to become operators or reinforced a desire that was already there. 

[MetroShadow]

5 hours ago, jajuan said:

I wasn't arguing for artics to be on the 36. I was just pointing out the flaws in EasyMoney's positions for why they don't get placed on the route very often. 

As pointed out before me, low artic usage on the 36 is more a function of the ridership counts and patterns don't call for anything more than 40 foot buses. It has nothing to do with the width of the roadways that are part of the route, number of turns or even the tightness of turns. If any of those had any weight, we wouldn't see the high number of artics on the 22, 151 or any of the express routes assigned to North Park.

Yes you may be a bus operator working there, but as you mentioned that's been the case for a year. However, North Park has been my neighborhood area home garage for 15 years with another 15 added from having been a regular rider of North Park bus since my high school days. So I think I have a good amount of observational experience with how and why different bus types within its ever evolving roster have been deployed among its given slot of assigned routes over the years. I mention this not to flex, but to make the larger point that we all learn from each other here whether any of us be operators observing from the inside such as yourself or passengers observing things from the outside. Heck, a number of our operator members are operators because they joined our forum as teenagers and younger adults and the discussions we've had here sparked their desire to become operators or reinforced a desire that was already there. 

+1 (And in 20 years on this forum, it helped me go into ops planning).

NP is my home garage, too, having grown up on the Clarendon/Lake Shore Corridor. I might have seen a handful of artics on the 36 since the 90s, but capacity doesn't call for it. With how artics work differently than a 40', I'm impressed that I have seen those turns happen on Irving Park (without daylight interventions or bad parking), let alone some of the turns I've seen in the Bay Area with narrower streets. 

[Sam92]

On 6/24/2025 at 11:45 PM, EasyMoney said:

Cant use Artics On 36 From Broadway/Addison To Broadway/Diversity Street To Narrow Can Cause Accident  

 

8 hours ago, jajuan said:

I wasn't arguing for artics to be on the 36. I was just pointing out the flaws in EasyMoney's positions for why they don't get placed on the route very often. 

As pointed out before me, low artic usage on the 36 is more a function of the ridership counts and patterns don't call for anything more than 40 foot buses. It has nothing to do with the width of the roadways that are part of the route, number of turns or even the tightness of turns. If any of those had any weight, we wouldn't see the high number of artics on the 22, 151 or any of the express routes assigned to North Park.

Yes you may be a bus operator working there, but as you mentioned that's been the case for a year. However, North Park has been my neighborhood area home garage for 15 years with another 15 added from having been a regular rider of North Park bus since my high school days. So I think I have a good amount of observational experience with how and why different bus types within its ever evolving roster have been deployed among its given slot of assigned routes over the years. I mention this not to flex, but to make the larger point that we all learn from each other here whether any of us be operators observing from the inside such as yourself or passengers observing things from the outside. Heck, a number of our operator members are operators because they joined our forum as teenagers and younger adults and the discussions we've had here sparked their desire to become operators or reinforced a desire that was already there. 

I think what might have been said was 36 isn't an artic designated route like 22 or 151 so doesn't get them unless it's the only thing available 🤷

[Sam92]

We all know that delays caused artics to get pulled from certain routes... This link might give more details as far as how and why. 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://tram.mcgill.ca/Research/Publications/Articulated_buses.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi-7JzH3cSOAxUstokEHSz8AOkQFnoECEkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1EceqYGY6oWaf2m8dg-y8b

[Busjack]

8 hours ago, Sam92 said:

We all know that delays caused artics to get pulled from certain routes... This link might give more details as far as how and why. 

 

A few things I noted:

• The dwell time is unaffected because STM uses 3 door artics.* CTA uses 2 door ones.
• The routes looked like one rush-hour one, one all day frequent one, and one limited stop one (but no indication of BRT). So, I guess similar to CTA.
• The study only deals with running time, and says on page 17: "Since the data obtained from the STM was collected from a sample of trips it was not possible to measure the effects of using articulated service on either the reliability of service or on headways." But that is exactly about what posters are complaining.
• It assumes that if increased running time requires more equipment to maintain headways, it would be more artics (pages 16-17),* not mixed fleets that CTA uses.

BTW, I noted that the data used included Automatic Vehicle Location and Automatic Passenger Counts, things CTA has but people I said were stuck  in 1968 ignore.

----

*Searching for a picture of a Montreal articulated bus yielded this 2024 Montreal Gazette article that instead of increasing its fleet and garage capacity as planned pre-Covid, the board voted to retire 155 buses, including artics, and not replace them.