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Bus years vs Calendar years


John Sulu

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I was fascinated with various types of buses all my life including school buses and I was fascinated what the year meant on these buses.

When a Blue Bird TC/2000 I rode to school once was a 1991 model, the bus driver said that it was a 1990 which meant that this 1991 bus could be put into service in 1990.  But I know it is not done this way to public transportation metrorail.

With the exception of certain motorcoaches, certain commuter coaches and a few bus orders, in terms of delivery date and entry to service date, are model years before the actual calendar year usually not done this way to most bus orders belonging to transit agencies whose taillights get changed in the middle or their service lives or for certain instances, were any Orion VII OGs and Orion VII NGs 2007 models while there were both 2nd-gen Novabus LFS' and 3rd-gen Novabus LFS' that were 2009 models?

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Yes, there are 2007 Orion VII OGs (operated by TTC, MTA and Niagara Falls Transit) and 2nd-gen LFSes mainly built for Québec systems, although Brampton and Guelph do have some; see the vehicle-specific threads for details

6 hours ago, John Sulu said:

When a Blue Bird TC/2000 I rode to school once was a 1991 model, the bus driver said that it was a 1990 which meant that this 1991 bus could be put into service in 1990

School bus model years seem to be more aligned with practices for cars (which can be sold as early as Jan 2 of the previous calendar year) rather than other heavy vehicles, although because of regulations, there are few, if any changes to them year over year (this is a similar practice with transit buses)

With transit buses, sometime model year can be different if the fleet numbers are classified by model year or when the vehicle entered service- Hamilton's 04xx were 2005 models, their 07xx were built as 2006 models and their 06xx as 2007 models while YRT's newest LFSAs are 2022 models but slated to enter service this year, where the order was pushed back from 2021

8 hours ago, John Sulu said:

Is it more common for buses, subways/metrorail, or equal?

Trains don't exactly have model years since they can last much longer than buses, the build year is usually the best identifier

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