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Santa Monica Big Blue Bus


Nabinut

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4023 At a repair/refurbishment facility here in Long Beach (Anaheim St. and Magnolia Ave)... There's more 40LFW LNG first Gen's here, but they are stored inside. Do they continue to have mechanical problems? Or is it a mid-life refurbishment?

On the right, That's a El Dorado EZ-Rider II MAX for LAX bus service if you wanted to know...

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They are probably there for refurbishment not repairs. I rode 4023 just 2 weeks ago according to my log and it ran pretty good and I didn't notice any mechanical problems. I think BBB maybe upgrading the displays on the 1st Gen LFW so they can scroll the same headsign displays as the LNG New Flyers and 2nd gen CNG LFW and 60BRT.

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I noticed that since 8/26 service change, 60ft NABI are now being used on Line 3 on the weekends when Rapid 3 is not running.

Also, all the new NABI buses (40 and 60ft) have switch to color head sign display. When they are on Rapid service, the sign is dark blue - all the letters are blue. When they are on Local service, the sign is orange.

And lastly, it looks like BBB is going to abandon the dual fleet (local + rapid). The 40ft New Flyer buses in normal paint scheme are now regularly scheduled to run on R3, R7, R10, and R12. And the 40ft New Flyer buses in rapid paint scheme are also reoutinely used on weekends (when there are no Rapid service) on #3 and #7.

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So they go for the BRT version, yet they don't add panels to enclose the tanks?

If it's one thing I ever hated about Gillig, it's their not strict on uniformity.

You cant blame Gillig for that. It's what the Big Blue Bus wanted (or the specs from the order they piggybacked from). Those buses are gorgeous by the way.

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You cant blame Gillig for that. It's what the Big Blue Bus wanted (or the specs from the order they piggybacked from). Those buses are gorgeous by the way.

Which reminds me that they were piggybacked off of an agency in MN.

I have to agree with Turbo19 on this one. Especially after being so used to Long Beach Gilligs, it's like seeing a NABI 60 BRT with a 40-LFW roof enclosure. It is a nice bus anyway, though.

They are nice buses, but it does look awkward to say to least.

The pictures don't show them well, but the tanks on the roof looked odd to me too. Anybody have a better photo of them?

There should be some photos of a regular Gillig Advantage CNG out there. Until now, I thought they were exclusive to the Advantage.

Gillig's BRT buses do not have the full roof enclosure, the BRT Plus that LBT have are the ones with the full roof enclosure. BBB did not order the BRT plus that is why they do not have the full roof rails and enclosure.

So this BRT "Plus" is a sub-product in the BRT line? So confusing.

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Interesting unit. More surprised Santa Monica went with a different numbering scheme (1300s) instead of 3600s or 3700s for the seating arrangement.

I noticed that too. Weird, since SMBBB/SMMBL has used the "SSXX" numbering scheme (where SS = # of seats (more or less)) for like forever.

Not like it's a trend, AFAIK, the only other agencies in the L. A. area that incorporate the year into the fleet numbering are LBT and LADOT.

Culver City used to be SSXX in the Fishbowl era, but inexplicably changed to the 7000 series with the 1981 RTS-04s (eventually renumbering the surviving Fishbowls into this scheme as well). Now they are end the 7100s. Torrance has been either in the 300s or 400s. Gardena has been in the 700s since the mid-70s, before that, they had 2-digit #s (IIRC).

Oops, I guess Montebello is YYXX as well, used to be that all of their buses were numbered in the 9300 series, then their early 90s TMC RTS had 3 digit numbers (300s and 500s, though those were subsequently renumbered into appropriate YYXX #s).

I don't follow the Norwalk fleet, so I have no idea what they are doing.

OCTD/OCTA seemed to use a different series for each bus type:

New Look Flxibles from the 70s were 1800s

1978 Grumman Flxibles were 2000s

1980 GMC RTS-03s were 3000/3100s

1980s Gillig Phantoms were 4000-4200s

1990s New Flyers were 5000s and up

and so on

RTD/MTA had too many buses to have a YYXX or SSXX (though by coincidence (or not?) their 1970 New Look Flxibles were 7000-7099, and the 1971 Flx were 7100-7199 :) (but then the 1973 Flxibles were 7200-7276, so that was the end of that). They did tend to group certain buses together (all the Flxibles from 1970 to 1980 were in the 7000s (last ones were the 1980 Grumman 870s (7500-7729). Also, less than 40 foot buses in the RTD era were in the 4000s, a practice which MTA ruined right off the bat, as their first 40-foot bus purchase, the 1995 CNG Neoplans, were numbered 4500-4695. Lately, they tend to number by manufacturer (New Flyer in the 5000s, NABI 40-footers in the 7000s, NABI 45 footers in the 8000s (and artics in the 9000s).

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The first 2 digit in BBB's fleet number denotes number of seats. The last 2 digit is sequential.

The Gillig bus has 40 seats but 4001 to 4099 are all currently used by NABI LFW (4001-4037) and New Flyer L40 (4038-4099). So they went with 13xx. I have no idea how they settled on 13xx.

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