Laidlaw numbering system on the CPTDB wiki

[TechSpotlight]

As discussed in another thread, there have been talks of simplifying the way buses are organized on the CPTDB that use the Laidlaw Educational Services numbering system.  For those who are unaware, Laidlaw's school buses, followed a numbering system which was used up until 2009 that contained a prefix and a suffix in the fleet number.  For any buses that are 1999 and older, the prefix is the second last number in the year, and the suffix is the last number in the year.  So, a 1997 Blue Bird CV200, for example would have a number of 9-2581-7.  For any buses 2000-2009, the prefix would be a 2, and the suffix would be the last number in the year.  So a 2006 IC CE, for example would have a number of 2-4300-6.  This complicates series pages, as ideally you want to have a range of units listed in the title.  However, since the prefix & suffix remain constant with the year of the bus and don't change.  This leads to some strange situations, like in this example, me and @School Bus 101 were creating some series pages for the First Student fleet in Calgary, there are these ex-Laidlaw 2007 IC REs at this link here: https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/First_Student_Canada_204636,_205986,_207126,_207286-207486,_207766-208276.

He recently discovered that a totally unrelated unit (207393) was discovered that was a different year, make, and model and thus would make the current page title incorrect.  As a result, I want to put a proposal to come up with a solution for this problem that balances efficiency and minimizing confusion.  @Articulated, any ideas?

[Articulated]

On 11/18/2023 at 2:02 PM, TechSpotlight said:

As discussed in another thread, there have been talks of simplifying the way buses are organized on the CPTDB that use the Laidlaw Educational Services numbering system.  For those who are unaware, Laidlaw's school buses, followed a numbering system which was used up until 2009 that contained a prefix and a suffix in the fleet number.  For any buses that are 1999 and older, the prefix is the second last number in the year, and the suffix is the last number in the year.  So, a 1997 Blue Bird CV200, for example would have a number of 9-2581-7.  For any buses 2000-2009, the prefix would be a 2, and the suffix would be the last number in the year.  So a 2006 IC CE, for example would have a number of 2-4300-6.  This complicates series pages, as ideally you want to have a range of units listed in the title.  However, since the prefix & suffix remain constant with the year of the bus and don't change.  This leads to some strange situations, like in this example, me and @School Bus 101 were creating some series pages for the First Student fleet in Calgary, there are these ex-Laidlaw 2007 IC REs at this link here: https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/First_Student_Canada_204636,_205986,_207126,_207286-207486,_207766-208276.

He recently discovered that a totally unrelated unit (207393) was discovered that was a different year, make, and model and thus would make the current page title incorrect.  As a result, I want to put a proposal to come up with a solution for this problem that balances efficiency and minimizing confusion.  @Articulated, any ideas?

Yeah, I agree - Laidlaw's fleet numbering "system" is annoying because of how the year is split up between a prefix and suffix around the unit number. It was a pain in the ass until I figured it out, even now it's just annoying to do the mental gymnastics when looking at a fleet number.

In terms of possible solutions, there's a number of ways that can be handled...

• One company that used to have a more complex numbering system was Transdev Québec - they used a 3 or 4 digit unit number, followed by a two-digit system/contract number (in subscript) followed by the last digit of the year. As an added complexity, the system/contract number varies, and was changed whenever the vehicle is moved to a different contract (a not infrequent occurrence). For the Wiki, we used the 3-4 digit number for the page title, and ignored the remainder to make it simpler and not have to change page titles anytime a bus moves. For example, 364218 belongs to the Transdev Québec 364-369 page.
  This method works well for series where fleets have consecutive unit numberings; I'm not sure how well that applies to Laidlaw, given we are aware of such a small portion of their fleet.
• There can be some logical assumptions made to page names, where the suffix is ignored and the series can be presented as a continuous series. For example, Barrie Transit 66102-66502 contains 5 buses, not 401. Again though, this works primarily when a series is (mostly) consecutive, and there may be a few too many holes in Laidlaw/First's numbering system for this to work in most cases.
• Alternatively, pages can be identified by year and model rather than by fleet number range; especially useful when units may not have fleet numbers, or all the units are not yet known, or the fleet number range may be discontinuous with other models/years in between. So for the example above, it would be "First Student Canada 2006 IC Bus RE200" or similar.

[TechSpotlight]

1 hour ago, Articulated said:

Yeah, I agree - Laidlaw's fleet numbering "system" is annoying because of how the year is split up between a prefix and suffix around the unit number. It was a pain in the ass until I figured it out, even now it's just annoying to do the mental gymnastics when looking at a fleet number.

• Alternatively, pages can be identified by year and model rather than by fleet number range; especially useful when units may not have fleet numbers, or all the units are not yet known, or the fleet number range may be discontinuous with other models/years in between. So for the example above, it would be "First Student Canada 2006 IC Bus RE200" or similar.

Thanks for the suggestions!  I tend to agree with the last suggestion about splitting up the pages into individual year/models.  Some examples of some really scattered fleet numbers being the 2006 IC REs originally from Laidlaw's California fleet, and the 2004 Corbeil 3800s that were spread throughout Laidlaw's Canadian fleet (mainly in Ontario, but other places too).  

[School Bus 101]

I was thinking of doing something similar to @Articulated's last suggestion. As an example, the following two pages can be consolidated into one titled "First Student Canada 2006 IC REs":

• https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/First_Student_Canada_204636,_205986,_207126,_207286-207486,_207766-208276
• https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/First_Student_Canada_220016-220686,_225276

The only possible issue with this method is that these two types of 2006 IC REs are a bit different in terms of specifications (engine, capacity, and tinted vs. non-tinted windows), but I think that making these differences apparent in the "Engine /Transmission /Seating /Destination Sign" table at the top should suffice?

 

[TechSpotlight]

17 hours ago, School Bus 101 said:

I was thinking of doing something similar to @Articulated's last suggestion. As an example, the following two pages can be consolidated into one titled "First Student Canada 2006 IC REs":

• https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/First_Student_Canada_204636,_205986,_207126,_207286-207486,_207766-208276
• https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/First_Student_Canada_220016-220686,_225276

The only possible issue with this method is that these two types of 2006 IC REs are a bit different in terms of specifications (engine, capacity, and tinted vs. non-tinted windows), but I think that making these differences apparent in the "Engine /Transmission /Seating /Destination Sign" table at the top should suffice?

 

In that case, you should make two separate pages, one for the RE200s with the VT365 engine and one for RE300s with the DT466E engine.