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Future TTC Bus Orders


FlyerD901

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37 minutes ago, lip said:

If they keep going with Novas, they better use a different seating layout in the back.

I honestly dont know where they have been getting their seating arrangement ideas for the past 3-4 years from (specifically with the Flexities and 40 foot Novas). They should take a close look at the seating arrangement Brampton uses with their newer Nova buses and go with something similar if they are that confused as to what to do. If they cant (for whatever odd reasoning they have) get it right, it's time to acquire the XD40. Enough with the experiments.

Right now the back isn't the great concern. There was some discussion during the meeting to redo the front as the strollers are preventing accessibility as strollers are blocking everyone from getting on. This was approved from the board to review the layout.

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7 hours ago, Xtrazsteve said:

Right now the back isn't the great concern. There was some discussion during the meeting to redo the front as the strollers are preventing accessibility as strollers are blocking everyone from getting on. This was approved from the board to review the layout.

Looking at the PDF document:

 

1. $58,010,227.68 inclusive of all applicable taxes for the purchase of 97 additional 40 foot buses for delivery in 2017, which includes options, alternatives, and changes already incorporated into the previous bus deliveries.

Interestingly, a rear window option is considered if FlyerD901 would want that. 

About the seating layout, could they put two wheelchair positions on each side instead of one side? This will maintain the 2+1 seating near the back door.

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4 hours ago, Kenster102.5 said:

I think the only reason there could be a rear window is if the TTC wanted to is if they wanted to continue to romanticize the GM Fishbowls. Other than that it really doesn't matter if there is a window or not.

I used to find it very useful, and constantly finding myself glancing backwards in a bus, always surprised there is no window. Particularly if you were on a short-turning bus, and you wanted to see if the emptier, non-short-turning bus was approaching you.  Or if the bus on the temporarily parallel bus route was behind you or not, to know to change now, rather than later.

I always thought it very practical - rather than just decoration.

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It doesn't say options for a rear window. It did however mention seating arrangement. I'm sure perimeter seating in the upper section will require less seats, but will be a cost to TTC for whatever reason, this could be Nova milking TTC. If its going o cost more and there aren't any complaints just leave the seating as is. I don't know why this stroller thing is being entertained, it just takes up room. They should design the buses to discourage people with big strollers. But that's my little pet peeve, something I have to just put up with

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22 hours ago, Xtrazsteve said:

The order has been approved. There was also some talks about how they'll spend that $840m of feds funds in a short period of time and the chair hopes it could be spent on replacements for more early retirements of the hybrids. If that ever happens, we might even see more Novas on the street.

Before they go wild with the free money!!1!, I'd hope that they'd consider if there's a better place to spend it than on scrapping relatively new buses. More LRVs? East Bayfront? DRL? Sure, the hybrids aren't the greatest buses, but would they be being replaced wholesale if it wasn't for the free money!!1!?

It's like moving up the retirement for T-1 cars because in theory there will be a new signal system on Bloor-Danforth Real Soon Now. Or like getting a tax refund and getting rid of your five-year-old car in favour of a brand new shiny one, without considering whether your roof is leaking or the furnace may be shot or your kid may need braces....

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1 hour ago, Ed T. said:

Before they go wild with the free money!!1!, I'd hope that they'd consider if there's a better place to spend it than on scrapping relatively new buses. More LRVs? East Bayfront? DRL? Sure, the hybrids aren't the greatest buses, but would they be being replaced wholesale if it wasn't for the free money!!1!?

It's like moving up the retirement for T-1 cars because in theory there will be a new signal system on Bloor-Danforth Real Soon Now. Or like getting a tax refund and getting rid of your five-year-old car in favour of a brand new shiny one, without considering whether your roof is leaking or the furnace may be shot or your kid may need braces....

From the sound of it, there is a million restrictions where they can spend the money and when does the project have to complete by. They probably can't use it to fund a new line expansion. Otherwise I don't see why they don't throw it towards new LRT lines. I suppose they can use it to speed up elevator installations and such.

The hybrids are horrible buses that keeps breaking down but it was noted in the meeting that newer buses won't reduce the spare ratio as they are necessary for new installations and additional maintenance for all the new tech systems (stop annoucements, presto, passenger counters, etc).

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16 hours ago, Ed T. said:

Before they go wild with the free money!!1!, I'd hope that they'd consider if there's a better place to spend it than on scrapping relatively new buses. More LRVs? East Bayfront? DRL? Sure, the hybrids aren't the greatest buses, but would they be being replaced wholesale if it wasn't for the free money!!1!?

 

It's like moving up the retirement for T-1 cars because in theory there will be a new signal system on Bloor-Danforth Real Soon Now. Or like getting a tax refund and getting rid of your five-year-old car in favour of a brand new shiny one, without considering whether your roof is leaking or the furnace may be shot or your kid may need braces....

To paraphrase from your example....

 

Your 5 year old car is a lemon, and needs more $2500 to keep it running every year with that number getting higher every year. A new car will only require $500 or so every year.

 

Granted that you are still paying a bit more up front, but it makes a lot more sense in the long run. And this is the exact same situation with the hybrids, especially as they come up to the age of requiring a lot of their proprietary equipment to be refurbished or replaced.

 

Dan

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On 2016-06-01 at 9:55 AM, smallspy said:

What makes you think that it's an experiment?

 

Dan

I was probably a little generous calling the seating arrangements an experiment. To be honest, I have no idea how they have been getting these bad ideas with the arrangements over the past 3-4 years.

 

First they want more standing room capacity on vehicles, then they come up with arrangements that hinder passenger flow and make standing on certain parts of the vehicle impossible (i'm referring to the 40 foot Novas, and to a certain extent the Flexities).

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6 hours ago, smallspy said:

To paraphrase from your example....

 

Your 5 year old car is a lemon, and needs more $2500 to keep it running every year with that number getting higher every year. A new car will only require $500 or so every year.

 

Granted that you are still paying a bit more up front, but it makes a lot more sense in the long run. And this is the exact same situation with the hybrids, especially as they come up to the age of requiring a lot of their proprietary equipment to be refurbished or replaced.

To paraphrase from your example, if the new car is $20,000 while your old lemon is paid for, after eight years the old car will have cost you maybe $25,000 (and that's with the repair bills going higher), while the new car will have cost you $24,000. Not exactly a clear-cut win for the new car. Retiring hybrids after ten years of service puts them on the same lemon-turkey level as the rusty New Flyers and Orion IIIs, except instead of a small part of the fleet we're talking a big chunk of it. Granted, if a big chunk of the fleet dies at the same time, you have issues.

I would think that the electronics in today's buses count as proprietary equipment, and this is behind the increase in the spare ratios for new buses, even though they are diesel and not hybrid.

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13 minutes ago, lip said:

I was probably a little generous calling the seating arrangements an experiment. To be honest, I have no idea how they have been getting these bad ideas with the arrangements over the past 3-4 years.

 

First they want more standing room capacity on vehicles, then they come up with arrangements that hinder passenger flow and make standing on certain parts of the vehicle impossible (i'm referring to the 40 foot Novas, and to a certain extent the Flexities).

Honestly no one will stand at the back unless it's a subway shuttle or there's absolutely no room. Unless we get some European buses with a set of doors at the back (like the Flexity's "European Tram") only a selected few would want to stand there. Majority of the people who ride busy bus routes don't ride for more 3 or 4 major streets. There's a large turnover of standing passengers on busy buses. 

The Flexity's aren't that bad for standees. There's lots of space for all 4 doors but the seats between it creates a narrow aisle. You may have seen many European Flexity designs that they only do 2+1 seats oppose to 2+2 seats on the TTC and Metrolinx ones. Do keep in mind that most European models like the Brussels ones are only 2.30m wide while the TTC ones are 2.54m wide and Metrolinx ones are 2.65m wide. That 24cm makes a big difference aesthetically. The European trams are still narrow providing little standing space while they only have 2+1 seating.

Bombardier passengers specs:

TTC: 70 seats + 181 standees

Brussels: 50 + 128 (5 modules car)

Berlin: 64+116 (5 modules uni-direction)

Blackpool Flexity 2 (2.65m wide): 74+148

TTC's seating layout isn't that bad in terms of actually space provided on the streetcars. Also no one likes to stand in the middle between doors either. We seen this on the subway cars. Everyone crowds around the doors.

 

Back on topic. TTC is better off redesigning the front of the bus oppose to the back of the bus. I would really like to see the 3 priority seating row behind the driver removed or pushed back and converted to storage space for all those damn strollers.

 

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On 2016-06-02 at 5:21 PM, Xtrazsteve said:

TTC is better off redesigning the front of the bus oppose to the back of the bus. I would really like to see the 3 priority seating row behind the driver removed or pushed back and converted to storage space for all those damn strollers.

 

There's only so much they would be able to do with that space given the odd design of the 40 foot Nova Bus. Moving the priority seats back would make passenger flow even worse given the proximity to the rear door, and removing them completely further reduces seating on a bus that has less seats than any other bus in the fleet. Honestly they'd be better off with the XD40, but we've already got a deal with NovaBus so switching right now wouldnt make financial sense.

As for the Flextities, I know you've gone through some of the basic specs so all i'll say is that they could have done much better with the layout and i'll leave at that for the purpose of staying on topic.

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I don't think TTC is that concern with the Nova design, I'm sure they are aware of it if they went through and ordered them for the last 3 years, plus another 2 years to go. It probably shows you how desperate or slim picking TTC has for new buses. In the report it didn't mentioned any ongoing talks with New Flyer, so I assume they broke of talks and any discussions.

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It's a combination of the two, they are desperate because of the slim pickings. They only have two options: either Nova Bus or NFI. Unfortunately that has been the case ever since Daimler crippled OBI.

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On 2016-06-02 at 4:30 PM, Ed T. said:

To paraphrase from your example, if the new car is $20,000 while your old lemon is paid for, after eight years the old car will have cost you maybe $25,000 (and that's with the repair bills going higher), while the new car will have cost you $24,000. Not exactly a clear-cut win for the new car. Retiring hybrids after ten years of service puts them on the same lemon-turkey level as the rusty New Flyers and Orion IIIs, except instead of a small part of the fleet we're talking a big chunk of it. Granted, if a big chunk of the fleet dies at the same time, you have issues.

I would think that the electronics in today's buses count as proprietary equipment, and this is behind the increase in the spare ratios for new buses, even though they are diesel and not hybrid.

You also haven't calculated the opportunity cost of the older vehicle being out of service more frequently, and the cost of using either transit or purchasing some other method of transport to get around when you don't have the ability to use it. Neither of those will be deal-breakers, but the aren't inconsequential either.

Certain things, like the engine management software and hardware are proprietary, sure. But the biggest push for increasing the spare ratio is to try and improve the reliability of the fleet as a whole and reduce the mileage on each vehicle individually. A bus on the road for 18 hours a day, 6 days a week doesn't leave a whole lot of time for preventative maintenance, and running 100,000km per year is a great way to wear out components quickly.

 

Dan

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On May 30, 2016 at 11:06 AM, Xtrazsteve said:

They aren't. He just cooked that up. There are some NGs that are physically dead which would be "officially" retired on paper so a replacement can be bought.

More valuable to us broken down into their components, to keep the others going.

or that's the plan, at least.

On May 31, 2016 at 10:57 PM, TTC-Driver said:

I haven't driven an Arrow Orion VII without AC yet, they fail sometimes that needs to turn off and on to kick in, because of new buses we got and they have enough time to fix older buses at garage.

I've run into that complaint at malvern before. Without getting too techie about it, it's a bunged up thermal expansion valve. 

We are aware of it (at least where I am) and are looking in to them as they get signed in.

On June 1, 2016 at 4:43 PM, Ed T. said:

Before they go wild with the free money!!1!, I'd hope that they'd consider if there's a better place to spend it than on scrapping relatively new buses. More LRVs? East Bayfront? DRL? Sure, the hybrids aren't the greatest buses, but would they be being replaced wholesale if it wasn't for the free money!!1!?

It's like moving up the retirement for T-1 cars because in theory there will be a new signal system on Bloor-Danforth Real Soon Now. Or like getting a tax refund and getting rid of your five-year-old car in favour of a brand new shiny one, without considering whether your roof is leaking or the furnace may be shot or your kid may need braces....

The hybrids are haemorrhaging money. Both in parts costs and man hours. What the hell do you think caused Daimler to pack up shop and go back to Europe? Things were going ok until the hybrid idea blossomed. 

They lost their shirts on warranty claims. Now that the expensive bits are off warranty, the TTC is wise to unload them as soon as feasible.

(any maintenance done on the battery on the roof requires 2 technicians, for safety reasons, so that man hours X2, FYI)

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If it wasn't for the facts that the feds were paying the extra $200,000 plus to go Hybrid and council wanting to be green, TTC wouldn't have gone this route in the end.

It took numerous photos and videos by me and articles written by a newspaper reporter before TTC had to stand up and say the batteries were a huge issue to them, as they were extra weight on the bus for carrying riders numbers and were failing after 2-3 years.

Daimler had to step up to save face by offering TTC free new replacement batteries with new technology that were lighter as well a new 5 year warranty.

Its like $60,000 to replace batteries per bus. Not sure what agreement was made with New York City on their Hybrid buses, but both TTC & NYC had the lion share of Hybrid buses on the road at the time.

Between the Hybrid issues as well the Orion VII issues, not one was willing to buy Orion buses to the point they close shop up. Remembering seeing the yard in December before they close that was totally empty and never saw this in the past.

If TTC could get the funding today for buses, the Hybrids would be history in no time and not fast enough for TTC. 

Given the choice who makes buses these days leaves TTC no room to go to get them. Then it maybe time TTC thinks about the plan that was brought forth years ago that TTC start building their own buses in house since they could do it better than buying from others and selling some to others other system to keep the overhead down. Will not fly as Queens parks calls the shots in transit funding as well been told who you are to buy from in the first place.

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19 hours ago, drum118 said:

If it wasn't for the facts that the feds were paying the extra $200,000 plus to go Hybrid and council wanting to be green, TTC wouldn't have gone this route in the end.

It took numerous photos and videos by me and articles written by a newspaper reporter before TTC had to stand up and say the batteries were a huge issue to them, as they were extra weight on the bus for carrying riders numbers and were failing after 2-3 years.

Daimler had to step up to save face by offering TTC free new replacement batteries with new technology that were lighter as well a new 5 year warranty.

Its like $60,000 to replace batteries per bus. Not sure what agreement was made with New York City on their Hybrid buses, but both TTC & NYC had the lion share of Hybrid buses on the road at the time.

Between the Hybrid issues as well the Orion VII issues, not one was willing to buy Orion buses to the point they close shop up. Remembering seeing the yard in December before they close that was totally empty and never saw this in the past.

If TTC could get the funding today for buses, the Hybrids would be history in no time and not fast enough for TTC. 

Given the choice who makes buses these days leaves TTC no room to go to get them. Then it maybe time TTC thinks about the plan that was brought forth years ago that TTC start building their own buses in house since they could do it better than buying from others and selling some to others other system to keep the overhead down. Will not fly as Queens parks calls the shots in transit funding as well been told who you are to buy from in the first place.

Yeah Dave. It was all you. No one else but you.

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On 2016-06-08 at 7:44 PM, Bus_Medic said:

The hybrids are haemorrhaging money. Both in parts costs and man hours. What the hell do you think caused Daimler to pack up shop and go back to Europe? Things were going ok until the hybrid idea blossomed. 

They lost their shirts on warranty claims. Now that the expensive bits are off warranty, the TTC is wise to unload them as soon as feasible.

(any maintenance done on the battery on the roof requires 2 technicians, for safety reasons, so that man hours X2, FYI)

I have to give props for the word "haemorrhaging" in a post.  Although it does give me the idea of giving the bandages/dressings a good wringing-out; the cash should drip everywhere. :D

I guess the notional $860 million would be enough to replace every single hybrid. However, such a big slug of buses will cause problems at the end of their life. The TTC doesn't do well at anticipating bus replacement costs. In theory, they should be saving up a fund while the new buses are running well, so as to have the cash to replace them at their end of life. What seems to happen (as I see it), other spending opportunities are taken up, the replacement falls below the line, and then in 18 years the Commission can run around in a panic because 800 buses are all falling apart.

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53 minutes ago, FlyerD901 said:

I think the $860 is for a bunch of projects not just bus replacement, but I could be wrong.

That's enough money to get like 1500 buses. That would be silly to replace the 2013 artics.

I don't know how off topic we have gotten. It was only a suggestion from Chair Colle that the money could be used to retire bad buses. It might not happen. They are still trying to figure out what they can spend the money on.

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1 hour ago, Xtrazsteve said:

I don't know how off topic we have gotten. It was only a suggestion from Chair Colle that the money could be used to retire bad buses. It might not happen. They are still trying to figure out what they can spend the money on.

Given that they are presenting the plan on the almost $billion at the committee meeting next week, I'm surprised the plan hasn't dropped already.

They've surely pretty much got it figured out by now though - it just hasn't leaked yet.

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Just now, nfitz said:

Given that they are presenting the plan on the almost $billion at the committee meeting next week, I'm surprised the plan hasn't dropped already.

They've surely pretty much got it figured out by now though - it just hasn't leaked yet.

Maybe next board meeting which is delayed till July 11.

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