Future TTC Bus Orders

[Hexagonal 10]

27 minutes ago, Ed T. said:

I noticed (sorry, I'm slow ) that the 8400 LFS buses have disc brakes, on the front anyway. All the Orion VIIs I've looked at have had drum brakes.

Is part of TTC's spec for buses now disc brakes, front and/or back? Or is that just Nova's way of satisfying whatever braking requirements are in the specs?

Pretty sure LFSes made these days have all wheel disc brakes. http://www.novabus.com/documents/Fiche technique/Technical Specifications EN LR.pdf

https://www.newflyer.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104&catid=2&Itemid=167 Same with NFI Xcelsiors

[Bus_Medic]

21 hours ago, Ed T. said:

I noticed (sorry, I'm slow ) that the 8400 LFS buses have disc brakes, on the front anyway. All the Orion VIIs I've looked at have had drum brakes.

Is part of TTC's spec for buses now disc brakes, front and/or back? Or is that just Nova's way of satisfying whatever braking requirements are in the specs?

Disc brakes on all 4 (or 6) wheels has been standard equipment for quite some time now.

the entire heavy duty industry is shifting towards them.

[Shaun]

Funny that the Orion VI's had disk brakes and that didn't go well. Too early for their time? 

[Ed T.]

3 hours ago, Bus_Medic said:

Disc brakes on all 4 (or 6) wheels has been standard equipment for quite some time now.

the entire heavy duty industry is shifting towards them.

Do any of the Orion VIIs have disc brakes? I'm pretty certain the 8000 series don't. Some of the NG VIIs?

Out of curiosity, which is easier to overhaul? And cheaper?

With cars, struggling with the brake shoe hold-down springs and all the other random retracting springs is what's a real pain with drum brakes. Unfortunately both my cars have four disc brakes and two drum brakes. But I've seen ads for truck drum brakes where supposedly they can be relined in minutes, so the design must be different (I sure couldn't do automotive drum brakes in minutes).

[Bus_Medic]

Everything up to the final 8300 spec'd drum brakes, but I'm fairly certain discs were available as an option by then. Someone who had closer ties to the factory may know better than I.

As far as reliability and ease of maintenance, I'd say discs win hands down now. It was a long, long learning curve getting there though. I recall early Rockwell discs on 102dl3 tags were absolutely awful in the late '90s. So much so that mci offered drum conversion kits for the tags at a special reduced cost.

the 9200s had discs in the front too, as did all other Orion 6s, ( except OC Transpo, I'm told) and they were problematic. TTC just stayed with the established technology until most of the kinks were ironed out.

 

 

[Hexagonal 10]

An Eglinton op on the 22A Coxwell today told me (well yesterday) that Eglinton is getting Novas on May. Not sure how credible this is but we'll see.

[leylandvictory2]

Rumor has it we will be getting 20 nova in may hence the training of about 60 operaters per week.

[Hexagonal 10]

6 hours ago, leylandvictory2 said:

Rumor has it we will be getting 20 nova in may hence the training of about 60 operaters per week.

Any rumors as to which series it'll be? I'm thinking it's likely Eglinton gets hand-me-downs from Arrow as Arrow and Wilson have had many of the newer toys to play with before.

[Antarctica]

10 hours ago, leylandvictory2 said:

Rumor has it we will be getting 20 nova in may hence the training of about 60 operaters per week.

4 hours ago, Hexagonal 10 said:

Any rumors as to which series it'll be? I'm thinking it's likely Eglinton gets hand-me-downs from Arrow as Arrow and Wilson have had many of the newer toys to play with before.

Since New Eglinton is mostly outdoor storage with some limited indoor storage, I do not know if the LFS can survive outdoors even though they don't have UWE on them.

There are a couple of options what is New Eglinton getting:

• All or some of the #8620-#8716 batch
• 20 what @leylandvictory2 said from the #8434-#8504/#8510-#8617 series from Arrow Road since they get the newer buses.

Where would the #74xx-#77xx go from here? Retirement or other garages apart from Birchmount? Time will tell.

 

[leylandvictory2]

I was told eglinton will be getting new buses.  The lfs will be fine.  The buses may be left running a couple hours before they schedule to leave the yard.  

[Kelvin3157]

3 hours ago, Antarctica said:

Where would the #74xx-#77xx go from here? Retirement or other garages apart from Birchmount? Time will tell.

The 74xx will slowly retire as new Novas come in

[Orion 1200]

3 hours ago, Antarctica said:

Since New Eglinton is mostly outdoor storage with some limited indoor storage...

Is it really necessary to keep saying "New" Eglinton 15 years after it opened?

[FlyerD901]

Ok folks, another round of buses coming our way!

SUPPLY OF 40' DIESEL LOW FLOOR BUSES

Supply and Delivery of Forty Foot Low Floor Clean Diesel Powered City Buses in 2018 and 2019. No exact amount

Closing June 1st 2017.

Document Request List

 

 

[Antarctica]

21 hours ago, Orion 1200 said:

Is it really necessary to keep saying "New" Eglinton 15 years after it opened?

I can refer to it as New Eglinton just as user @2020 had to differentiate from Old Eglinton. 
 

1 hour ago, FlyerD901 said:

Ok folks, another round of buses coming our way!

SUPPLY OF 40' DIESEL LOW FLOOR BUSES

Supply and Delivery of Forty Foot Low Floor Clean Diesel Powered City Buses in 2018 and 2019. No exact amount

Closing June 1st 2017.

Document Request List

 

 

TBH, I don't think I want all Novas in Toronto by the 2030s. I prefer a New Flyer Xcelsior for the TTC so Queensway can have some of the fleet of XD40s as much as they want after all of the D40LFs retired.

[lip]

^I dont think anyone wants Novas in Toronto. Both drivers and passengers alike don't like them.

[map.man (Darrin)]

11 hours ago, lip said:

^I dont think anyone wants Novas in Toronto. Both drivers and passengers alike don't like them.

I can't stand the ones here.  They have Insight seats with no padding or fabric on them.  VERY uncomfortable on the roads of Buffalo (we're had a long pothole season since it's been warm-cold-warm-cold-warm.

The only good thing about them is that they're CNG, and are *quieter* than diesel.

[Xtrazsteve]

17 hours ago, lip said:

^I dont think anyone wants Novas in Toronto. Both drivers and passengers alike don't like them.

It's really just the seating layout and delay when the doors open.

[Ed T.]

Nova seating layout is fine with me (rode 8400 just now). Door opening is fine too. Way better than on Orion VIIs for a variety of reasons.

Admittedly, the Nova LFS isn't an Orion V. But then, what is?

[2044]

Word is, rear seating arrangement will be changing on the next batch.

[FlyerD901]

They been saying that for a while now. Council even wants TTC to study the seating arrangement in the front too, so lets see if that changes.

[Xtrazsteve]

I think they'll pilot a new layout instead of introducing it onto the entire batch. The issue came up in a board meeting late last year. The concern was for better layout for strollers and accessibility.

[Translink69]

 

 

11 hours ago, Xtrazsteve said:

It's really just the seating layout and delay when the doors open.

Is that why they're disliked in Toronto? Cause here in Vancouver the issues were with excessive amounts of maintenance and performance on hills. Seating and Doors don't seem to be that big of an issue to people here.

[Xtrazsteve]

2 hours ago, Translink69 said:

 

 

Is that why they're disliked in Toronto? Cause here in Vancouver the issues were with excessive amounts of maintenance and performance on hills. Seating and Doors don't seem to be that big of an issue to people here.

Honestly, the TTC doesn't really know yet. The oldest Novas are the artics from late 2013 which are only 3.5 years old. Word is Novas are pretty bad when they get to their later life. 

Problem is Vancouver got a batch of hybrid Novas. Hybrids are the biggest problem with weak engine and excessive maintenance. Is there something wrong with the regular diesel Novas too?

Vancouver also doesn't have the Orion VII model to compare with. You guys also don't have the same layout. The Novas aren't terrible buses but people are more in favorite for NFI. TTC also seem to have spec'd the Novas with speed control. They have powerful engines but they drive like a hybrid. That's what I been told. Ops rather driver an Orion VII. Eglinton division (soon to get Novas) have older Orion VII's with the less powerful S50 engine, so could be more comparable.

[Translink69]

6 hours ago, Xtrazsteve said:

Honestly, the TTC doesn't really know yet. The oldest Novas are the artics from late 2013 which are only 3.5 years old. Word is Novas are pretty bad when they get to their later life. 

Problem is Vancouver got a batch of hybrid Novas. Hybrids are the biggest problem with weak engine and excessive maintenance. Is there something wrong with the regular diesel Novas too?

Vancouver also doesn't have the Orion VII model to compare with. You guys also don't have the same layout. The Novas aren't terrible buses but people are more in favorite for NFI. TTC also seem to have spec'd the Novas with speed control. They have powerful engines but they drive like a hybrid. That's what I been told. Ops rather driver an Orion VII. Eglinton division (soon to get Novas) have older Orion VII's with the less powerful S50 engine, so could be more comparable.

I don't think regular diesels are that big of an issue, it's just that we had so many 2nd and 3rd Gen Hybrids with problems that it left a bad taste in the mouth of CMBC/Translink that they don't wanna risk buying more. They've been happy with NFI since the 80s and they'll continue with em for as long as possible. New Flyer knows this and is always first to bid on an order, and even when Nova bids, they know it'll still go to New Flyer.  I think the 4th gen hybrids have fixed most of the issues, and Translink might get a small order soon. 

Translink also hated the Orion VII, so I think that's why they went Nova. the maintenance staff, drivers, and passengers didn't like the Orion VII so they went with the best alternative which was Nova.

I do believe though that they had an order with Orion for a bunch of VIIs,  but after they were disliked so much, they ordered a bunch of Vs. 

[Dane]

Hold on that's some inaccurate bus history there. NFI built and delivered absolute junk to Vancouver about a decade and a bit ago. That's what led to several Nova orders. NFI buses were late, and delivered with broken steering mechanisms that necessitated the removal of entire sub fleets of buses and discontinuation of evening bike rack use for almost a year. Warranty issues weren't being honoured necessitating a lawsuit and frame rot on the D40LF necessitated early retirement of many vehicles. The cherry on top was when Vancouver, a massive system, had to borrow small community buses from BC Transit and hurriedly buy buses out of Washington state just to maintain basic service because of NFI issues.

 

This information is admittedly two years old now but when I was last privy to detailed reports the Nova Hybrids, regular Novas, and 40 ft NFIs all had about the same reliability. The clear worst was the 60 foot NFI diesels. 

 

The idea that NFI had been fine for the last three decades is a transit fan falsehood.