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8350-series Nova LFS - Updates


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8 minutes ago, artthouwill said:

The last I heard or read was that 8350 was at South Shops but nothing since.  I would guess CTA is still inspecting the bus and has yet to give the Green light on accepting deliveries.  Is it me or is CTA taking longer to accept Nova deliveries compared to New Flyer.

What's unusual, is that unlike (the fake) 1000, 7900, and the Compobus, nobody has reported here seeing it on the street.

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On 2/25/2022 at 4:54 PM, artthouwill said:

The last I heard or read was that 8350 was at South Shops but nothing since.  I would guess CTA is still inspecting the bus and has yet to give the Green light on accepting deliveries.  Is it me or is CTA taking longer to accept Nova deliveries compared to New Flyer.

Trust me to be honest I wish New Flyer would of won the contract for CTA instead of Nova, because New Flyer reaches the finish line delivering buses quicker than Nova does. Maybe a few more weeks then we should see a few #8350’s come over.

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52 minutes ago, ChicagoNova said:

New Flyer XD40s maybe?

Not unless CTA changes its mind in going far in exercising options on the NOVA contract and puts a bid out that results in a contract that NF actually wins. Also depends on how far CTA gets in getting more infrastructure in place to facilitate the bus fleet going electric.

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On 2/25/2022 at 4:54 PM, artthouwill said:

The last I heard or read was that 8350 was at South Shops but nothing since.  I would guess CTA is still inspecting the bus and has yet to give the Green light on accepting deliveries.  Is it me or is CTA taking longer to accept Nova deliveries compared to New Flyer.

I think this chip shortage might be affecting manufacturing. Havent seen many new cars or buses lately. Only saw one car transporter in 2 weekend days of travel. The Jeep belvidere plant looks slow, theres not even that many cars parked out front. With the economy and everything its going to be a nightmare year for manufacturing. Nova only needs to make 100 buses for this year on the 8350 contract. This is gonna be a long drawed out grinding delivery. 

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17 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Budget says they will arrive first quarter so 4 more weeks and the buses are officially late. 

Welp so this means we will finally have them in the house after all of these months of #8350 testing. Looks like the first half of April we will see some action. If New Flyer won we would of already had the new buses on the street by now since they tend to deliver buses faster than Nova. What’s next, the additional 500 additional buses which could take 4 years to deliver. I hope New Flyer wins the next contract of buses after the #8350’s. I hope CTA doesn’t turn into a Nova house.

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On 2/27/2022 at 9:03 AM, BusHunter said:

I think this chip shortage might be affecting manufacturing. Havent seen many new cars or buses lately. Only saw one car transporter in 2 weekend days of travel. The Jeep belvidere plant looks slow, theres not even that many cars parked out front. With the economy and everything its going to be a nightmare year for manufacturing. Nova only needs to make 100 buses for this year on the 8350 contract. This is gonna be a long drawed out grinding delivery. 

100 buses seems easy and slightly quick on the base order. Prayers that Nova shouldn’t be too long to deliver. Since New Flyer pulls the rope without hesitation. Hopefully things should be quick if they secretly have half of the base order already assembled.

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11 minutes ago, Bus1883 said:

Welp so this means we will finally have them in the house after all of these months of #8350 testing. Looks like the first half of April we will see some action. If New Flyer won we would of already had the new buses on the street by now since they tend to deliver buses faster than Nova. What’s next 500 additional buses all completely delivered around 2026 or sooner? I hope New Flyer wins the next contract of buses after the #8350’s who wants CTA to be all Novas????

Well the contract was for 100 buses a year, so its gonna be a slow grind. One part of the city may have these for a year or two before another does. Most wont notice the difference, just us buffs!! Then they throw out these press releases, ''oh we're going all electric by 2040'' what a laugh. The companies probably couldnt even produce them that fast. 

Now if they put their thinking caps on, they would say hmm we have all these buses in the cta junkyard that could maybe be brought back as electric retrofits. Just to experiment with. Do a couple to start. See if it takes off. If not, no foul, but if they looked around they might even get the feds to help them do it. Retire buses? Maybe not so fast there son!!

It could be good press for the feds and them and look like they are doing something constructive towards the future. Just sayin'.

 

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10 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

Well the contract was for 100 buses a year, so its gonna be a slow grind. One part of the city may have these for a year or two before another does. Most wont notice the difference, just us buffs!! Then they throw out these press releases, ''oh we're going all electric by 2040'' what a laugh. The companies probably couldnt even produce them that fast. 

Now if they put their thinking caps on, they would say hmm we have all these buses in the cta junkyard that could maybe be brought back as electric retrofits. Just to experiment with. Do a couple to start. See if it takes off. If not, no foul, but if they looked around they might even get the feds to help them do it. Retire buses? Maybe not so fast there son!!

It could be good press for the feds and them and look like they are doing something constructive towards the future. Just sayin'.

 

Whenever all 600 buses are delivered either in 2026 or so (my guess). 2040 is only 14 years away. It did state on Transitchicago.com that the #8350’s will be given a useful life of 12-14 years before they can be retired by 2040 since that is the goal?. Having a large fleet of electric buses seems like a lot of money especially a large number of electric buses in one fleet even tho the electric technology is still new.

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1 hour ago, Bus1883 said:

Whenever all 600 buses are delivered either in 2026 or so (my guess). 2040 is only 14 years away. It did state on Transitchicago.com that the #8350’s will be given a useful life of 12-14 years before they can be retired by 2040 since that is the goal?. Having a large fleet of electric buses seems like a lot of money especially a large number of electric buses in one fleet even tho the electric technology is still new.

I dont think the cta has had a bus run for 12 years only. Maybe the Opus' Those 8350 buses will probably be at FG in 2040!! I see the 2040 thing getting extended to 2050 at least. They can always do like some of these small cities, run paratransits as regular transit buses. Cheaper to buy a set of electric buses then. 

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4 hours ago, BusHunter said:

I dont think the cta has had a bus run for 12 years only. Maybe the Opus' Those 8350 buses will probably be at FG in 2040!! I see the 2040 thing getting extended to 2050 at least. They can always do like some of these small cities, run paratransits as regular transit buses. Cheaper to buy a set of electric buses then. 

Yeah 2050 seems like a better position to go all electric and I doubt the #8350s will run for 12-14 years, it could possibly be longer, CTA is pretty late when it comes to retiring buses a bit pass an expected age. We have some buses that will need to be retired within the next 4-5 years. Due to COVID when it first began which prevented the last of the #6400’s, some #1000’s and a few of the #4000’s from getting retired.

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4 hours ago, BusHunter said:

I dont think the cta has had a bus run for 12 years only. Maybe the Opus' Those 8350 buses will probably be at FG in 2040!! I see the 2040 thing getting extended to 2050 at least. They can always do like some of these small cities, run paratransits as regular transit buses. Cheaper to buy a set of electric buses then. 

Yeah lots of buses run past 12 years, the #900s were only 5 years away from that age when they were retired in 2014. The #800’s fairly made 13 years.

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21 minutes ago, Bus1883 said:

Yeah 2050 seems like a better position to go all electric and I doubt the #8350s will run for 12-14 years, it could possibly be longer, CTA is pretty late when it comes to retiring buses a bit pass an expected age. We have some buses that will need to be retired within the next 4-5 years. Due to COVID when it first began which prevented the last of the #6400’s, some #1000’s and a few of the #4000’s from getting retired.

Based on memory of CTA announcing whenuntil  they expected the bus fleet to be 100% wheelchair accessible, the MAN Americanas were supposed to be gone a few months after the old Flyer D901s, which themselves were gone by summer 2002. That got pushed back to early 2003. That then got pushed to summer 2003, which then became fall 2003. I think they stated a by year's end 2003 announcement before they finally stopped announcing. The Americanas ended up lasting until about mid-spring 2004, a good 19 years of service. So year CTA doesn't let go of buses too fast after hitting retirement age despite stating at the time the NF D40s came online that they would do better in keeping average bus age in its fleet from going too high.

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9 hours ago, Bus1883 said:

Whenever all 600 buses are delivered either in 2026 or so (my guess). 2040 is only 14 years away. It did state on Transitchicago.com that the #8350’s will be given a useful life of 12-14 years before they can be retired by 2040 since that is the goal?. Having a large fleet of electric buses seems like a lot of money especially a large number of electric buses in one fleet even tho the electric technology is still new.

Naw the 8350's gone be like 2041-42 before they fully get retired 

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10 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Well the contract was for 100 buses a year, so its gonna be a slow grind. One part of the city may have these for a year or two before another does. Most wont notice the difference, just us buffs!! Then they throw out these press releases, ''oh we're going all electric by 2040'' what a laugh. The companies probably couldnt even produce them that fast. 

Now if they put their thinking caps on, they would say hmm we have all these buses in the cta junkyard that could maybe be brought back as electric retrofits. Just to experiment with. Do a couple to start. See if it takes off. If not, no foul, but if they looked around they might even get the feds to help them do it. Retire buses? Maybe not so fast there son!!

It could be good press for the feds and them and look like they are doing something constructive towards the future. Just sayin'.

 

I've been thinking about that all this time.

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47 minutes ago, ChicagoNova said:

I've been thinking about that all this time.

There's been a history of this, like the current 20 year old Novas, but also of CTA getting rid of buses en masse when they became obsolete, such as the New Looks when 69th closed and the 6000s when Archer closed. 

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