gilligfanboi

I was driving by the downtown Orlando LYNX station on I-4 today and saw a 40-foot Proterra Catalyst parked out front. I assume this was a demo unit. Not sure what will come from it, if anything.

Can someone explain to me the differences between the 29' Advantage/BRT and the 35/40' models. I've noticed that the 29' buses seem to have smaller wheels/tires and they have a circular wheel cut-out instead of the one that looks like half of an octagon on the longer models. Why is that?

I'm wondering about the delivery of Cap Metro's new Gillig BRTs. Anyone know how many are in service? Surely they have more than just the pilot bus now.

I'm shocked it's only 35 CNGs in service. I see them everywhere! For a few weeks after they entered service, I continued to to see Phantoms from time to time. But it's been a couple of weeks since I spotted one.

I've spotted several of the new CNGs. I'm curious why they have white front and side destination signs and amber ones in the rear. Some of the Lymmo buses are white all around, but some have amber in the rear too. I think some of the most recent 40 foot diesels have white all around. What gives?

Great pic! I follow Fred's Flickr, but I haven't seen him post any shots of it there. Where did you dig this up?

I have to admit, I was hoping for BRTPlus styling. But this pilot bus looks pretty good! Seems like they've got a ton of the 1999-2001 era Gillig low floors still running around. I'm curious to see whether CapMetro orders a portion of these new ones in one-door suburban configuration to replace the 91XX suburban fleet.

Here is a pic of the Austin Gillig. Photo by Fred Reutzel. Austin has gillig low floors from the early 2000's that are up for replacement.

I guess this is old news, but looks like CapMetro ordered 152 Gilligs for delivery starting in 2016.

https://www.capmetro.org/uploadedFiles/Capmetroorg/Public_Involvement/Board_Meetings/BOD-Minutes-Nov-12-2014.doc

Looks like the pilot bus was supposed to be on property this month. Anyone had any sightings?

I wonder if these will be LFS or LFX? Definitely interesting to see Austin get its first artics.

Better late than never, I guess. I think it's a good looking bus!

You can add CapMetro in Austin, TX to the list. But only for a meager 3 units. They have 2 DE40LFs and 1 DE40LFR.

That looks longer than 40', and the Neoplan site even said AN440TLF/AN445TLF. Bet you this is the latter...

UAL has FOUR Neoplan low floors at O'Hare. Most were used on shuttle route between Headquarters on Algonquin Rd and airport. BU046, BU047, BU048, BU700. Each one is different. BU048 has a stepped roof. Ex demos/prototypes as far as I know.

I'm not convinced it's a 45-footer. Given that UAL only has four Neoplans, and they're all different, it seems clear that the bus pictured at the top of this thread and the bus pictured on the web archive of Neoplan's TLF page are the exact same physical bus.

If you look at the top photo on the old Neoplan site, you see a model with three doors. It has a window above the front wheel, then another, then a door, then another window. After that it appears to be identical to the United bus. If we assume the windows are of similar widths, which they appear to be, then it would seem that extra set of wide doors makes up most of the extra length required to make the top picture a 45-footer.

The UAL bus has just the two windows between the front wheel and the rear door. I think it's a 440TLF.

Pretty sure it's an AN440TLF. See the bottom picture on this page.

Off the top of my head:

- City of Commerce Transit (Commerce, CA)

- Culver Citybus (Culver City, CA)

- Fargo Moorhead MAT (Fargo, ND/Moorhead, MN)

- Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority (Allentown, PA)

- Long Beach Transit (Long Beach, CA)

- Mountain Line (Flagstaff, AZ)

- MTD Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA)

- North County Transit District (northern San Diego County, CA)

- Norwalk Transit District (Norwalk, CT)

- Omnitrans (San Bernardino, CA)

- Orange County Transportation Authority (Orange County, CA)

- Riverside Transit Agency (Riverside, CA)

- Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (New York, NY)

- Simi Valley Transit (Simi Valley, CA)

- Tulsa Transit (Tulsa, OK)

- Visalia City Coach (Visalia, CA)

Add CapMetro in Austin, TX to the list. We are 100% low-floor except for 12 or so MCI D4500s used on longer express routes.

Fleet consists of:

D30LF

D35LF

D35LFR

D40LFR

DE40LF

DE40LFR

Gillig LF 40'

Optima Opus under 35'

MCI D4500/CT

Those Austin New Flyer LFRs are hot to death! And I love how they spell out CAPITAL METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY along the rooflines of the bus...

They started that with our 2003 batch of D35LFs. Those buses were delivered with nothing but a solid white paint job, and then given a minimal decal treatment with just the roofline writing and a logo under the driver's window about a year later.

I've always figured they were supposed to get the old CapMetro blue and green cheat lines and other decals once they got here (that was the current scheme at the time). Here's a '97 D35LF in that old scheme:

That DE40LFR is actually for San Antonio's 'VIA' Transit Service. If you search "VIA bus" on flickr, a few pics of the new LFRs will come up. They were taken by someone in San Antonio.

Looking through Flickr, I noticed VIA is getting CNG NABI LFWs.

Seems like an odd time for them to adopt CNG, especially when it appears to be for such a small sub-fleet. They were an all-diesel fleet up until now. If they were maintaining CNG facilities, I wasn't aware of it.

Aside from that, I figured VIA had made the switch to New Flyer after their circa 2000 order of NABIs. They've been taking D40LFs and now the DE40LFRs for some time now. For a medium-sized agency, I don't understand how it's anything more than an added cost to be ordering NABIs and New Flyers using CNG and Diesel.

Since you are from Austin... Do you know anything about some Eagles CapMetro supposedly had in commuter service in the 1990's? Ran across a reference from late 90's, but no details...

Andre

If those existed, they definitely escaped my notice. To be fair, though, I was pretty young in the 1990s.

The route structure was a lot different (read: more limited) back then. CapMetro had what I always assumed was a small number of suburban-configured 40-foot Gillig Phantoms. Not sure what year they went into service, but I know it was 1989 or earlier. They stuck around until at least 2001. Those were the only commuter-type vehicles I can remember seeing back then.

The Gillig suburbans were replaced by a fleet of about 30 Gillig Advantage suburbans in 2000. Now we have D4500s, as well.

I'll have to ask MetroBus about the Eagles. He would probably know.

Sorry, but where's the proof that the Opus is discontinued?

Thanks!

Don't have much to offer on that one, but I would note that NABI has never bothered completing the "under construction" Optima portion of their website. It's been like that for months and months.

welcome to the board and nice shots

Meant to mention it earlier, but I guess I didn't. All photos are courtesy of MetroBus on Flickr.

Thanks for the welcome!

If they are indeed retiring the D30LF's, there're 4 possibilities for them (ranking from the most to least likely):

1. Use their recent deliveries of D35LFR's on the 30-footer routes.

That would make sense, especially given how much Austin has grown since 1997. It is entirely possible that there aren't enough low capacity routes anymore to make owning that subfleet worthwhile. Plus, I've seen D35LFs on a lot of the routes that usually get the D30LFs, so it's obviously not a length issue. I believe I read, though, that only seven of the recent deliveries were 35-footers. The rest were all 40-foot. Take that for what it's worth.

2. Order D30LFR's (Benefit: Standard fixed-route, non-express fleet more towards New Flyer. Drawback: D30LFR is an 1-door bus)

Not sure what to say about this option. On the one hand you would assume that if they wanted D30LFRs, they would have ordered them when they ordered the 35s and 40s. On the other hand, who knows?

3. Purchase 30ft. Gillig Low Floor's (Benefit: Parts commonality with existing Gillig LF's and a 2-door bus. Drawback: Impede fleet standardization)

I'm going to say no on this one. Your point about fleet standardization is well taken. Plus, CapMetro and Gillig have been at odds for 5 years over who's at fault for four Gillig low-floors that caught fire during revenue operation. CapMetro says it's a Gillig design flaw. Gillig says CapMetro was mis-handling maintenance. I think it would take a miracle to see another Cap Metro Gillig order in the near future.

4. Get Optima Opus Under-30ft's (They already run Opus Under 35ft's)

Perhaps, although now that MetroRail is up and running, it seems like most of the Optimas are confined to downtown circulator service. If they're happy with the Optimas, perhaps it could happen. Does anyone know if they're as robust as a D30LF? Durable?

I really like that colour scheme, a great shade of green, white graphics, well done!

They do half the local buses in that green, and the other half in a dark blue:

They're basically the colors pulled from the cheat lines in the old scheme:

Express buses and trains are red:

And when they're not wrapped, hybrids are teal:

Of course, there are also a handful of bizarre exceptions to the rules...

I 2nd mike from edmonton's comment about welcoming you aboard. Unfortunately, I'm not from Austin but I do welcome another Texan to this place.

Houston's my home, BTW.

Any new buses going to Austin?

Our newest batch is a mix of 2009 D35LFRs and D40LFRs. I don't know how many of each.

There was a post a while back about the differences between those and the small number of 2008 D40LFRs we got. For reference, here's one of the '08s:

And one of the '09s:

As you can see, the 2008 has the traditional LFR headlight arrangement, and bonded type windows. For 2009, they went to a revised headlight arrangement, which I'm told is meant to solve a problem with our bike racks getting in the way of the lights. They also reverted back to the old-style windows like we have on all of our 1997 and 2003 New Flyers. It's a shame..I like the bonded windows a lot better!

My biggest question is still whether they're in the process of retiring the 1997 D30LFs, and what will replace them.

Question, when are they suppose to open the Metrorail? I heard it was delay indefinitely, but much of the work is complete on it. What is the hold up on this rail system?

MetroRail finally rolled out on March 22, 2010. It's been fairly smooth since then. The biggest problem was the crossing signals were not operating reliably during tests, so they had to re-do them somehow.

Welcome aboard from Edmonton, Alberta

Not too sure about other Austinites on the board

But we welcome anybody here

Thanks for the welcome! I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Lifelong Austinite here, but fairly new to the forum. Any other Austinites around, or just fans of CapMetro in general?

I remember seeing a document on the CapMetro website a few years ago that said they planned on having all the 1997 D30LFs retired by the end of 2010. As far as I can tell, they haven't made a sizable dent in that fleet, if any at all. I always see a lot of them at the yard off 183.

Once all 75 of those go...what are they going to replace them with? I'm not sure exactly what they have on order, but I certainly haven't heard anything about new 30-footers. Anyone have firm info on what they do have on order?

Looking further ahead, I'm wondering what vehicle(s) they'll select for MetroRapid service in the next couple of years. It would be cool if Austin finally got some artics.

Feel free to share any info you have on CapMetro!

Anyone have any information on Cap Metro in Austin, TX? They've been receiving a lot of new D35LFRs and D40LFRs. I thought they were supposed to be well into retiring the 1997 D30LFs by now, but there sure are a lot of them on the road still.

Any idea what they have on order, and what will replace the 75 D30LFs?