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Vancouver general sightings and notes


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24 minutes ago, Matt Dunlop said:

I love the wrap! You don't really see pink buses, and it really makes the bus pop. The regular Blue/Gray can get kinda boring. 

There are orange, white and various blue/black wraps for these. Also a purplish one for Endy Mattresses, pretty cool. 

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44 minutes ago, dover5949 said:

Anyone know why the 008's have diesel's on today? I don't understand why the 7 18000's can't be assigned to the run today? 

There's watermain work going on at Fraser and 12th today.  As for why the 18000's aren't on the 8; my guess would be how the 18000's at VTC are being parked and deployed.  Given that they show up on random blocks on the 3, 8, 10 and 20, it seems likely that VTC is simply parking the 18000's in the artic trolley tracks and booking them out as if they were extra artic trolleys, going out on whatever run is next when they are the first bus in the lane, rather than having a dedicated lane for parking the XDE60's.  Since the 18000's wind up randomly parked among the artic trolleys, it would not be possible to assign them all to one specific route.  It would be nice if VTC would give the 18000's their own track so that there would be a lane readily avaliable to cover weekend detours on the 3, 8 or 20, but you would need a few more XDE60's at VTC to have enough to fill an entire lane.  

Of course, if I had my way, I would shuffle routes to assign the 44 and 480 to VTC, so that there would be some diesel artics avaliable to cover weekend reroutes of the 3, 8 and 20.

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6 hours ago, Michael Marriott said:

There's watermain work going on at Fraser and 12th today.  As for why the 18000's aren't on the 8; my guess would be how the 18000's at VTC are being parked and deployed.  Given that they show up on random blocks on the 3, 8, 10 and 20, it seems likely that VTC is simply parking the 18000's in the artic trolley tracks and booking them out as if they were extra artic trolleys, going out on whatever run is next when they are the first bus in the lane, rather than having a dedicated lane for parking the XDE60's.  Since the 18000's wind up randomly parked among the artic trolleys, it would not be possible to assign them all to one specific route.  It would be nice if VTC would give the 18000's their own track so that there would be a lane readily avaliable to cover weekend detours on the 3, 8 or 20, but you would need a few more XDE60's at VTC to have enough to fill an entire lane.  

Of course, if I had my way, I would shuffle routes to assign the 44 and 480 to VTC, so that there would be some diesel artics avaliable to cover weekend reroutes of the 3, 8 and 20.

I don't understand why CMBC does not make use of the auxiliary power on the trolley's & instead would rather place diesel's on the routes instead? When I was in San Francisco this spring 2 trolley routes were on detour due to road construction. These 2 routes still kept the trolleys on the route & we went several miles on auxiliary power still keeping up with the posted speed limit & no pole pullers either.

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1 hour ago, dover5949 said:

I don't understand why CMBC does not make use of the auxiliary power on the trolley's & instead would rather place diesel's on the routes instead? When I was in San Francisco this spring 2 trolley routes were on detour due to road construction. These 2 routes still kept the trolleys on the route & we went several miles on auxiliary power still keeping up with the posted speed limit & no pole pullers either.

The XT's in Seattle and San Francisco have newer generation batteries that give a longer range, and allow higher speed.  They also allow auxiliary systems, most importantly the air compressor, to operate when the bus is in battery mode.

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On 8/11/2019 at 4:56 PM, Opal said:

I mentioned this in the transfer thread because in my mind it's related to that as well, but what's the point of the transfer then if they couldn't use them for a time when they need non-trolleys?  Seems counter-intuitive.  Although they didn't do this when they had the 12000s either, so I guess VTC just doesn't know how to do that.  Example, although many of the 12000s were used on the 49, there were 28 buses there - only 12 or so were used on weekends, so instead of deploying them on the 3, 8, 10, or 20 when they needed non-trolleys, they'd leave the extras sitting in the yard while they stuck 40-footers on the other artic routes.  Doubt they'd do that with the 49...  I know there aren't "enough" of them, but if it's just one route (like it was yesterday and again today), just deploy as many as possible and then fill in with 40-footers.  They would have known about these detours enough in advance to assign a track for them the night before...

I agree with the 44 and 480 comments - never understood why either of these routes were NOT at VTC, since VTC can handle artics.

The problem is quite simply that there is not enough space at VTC. When the yard is at capacity, it becomes difficult to "assign a track" for a specific subset of buses the night before a given bookout, because there aren't any free tracks that don't already have buses on them. When the 49 was first operated with artics out of VTC, the tracks that were used to park the 12000s on were the ones that were previously used to stage diesel buses coming back to the yard late at night. As a result, incoming diesels returning to VTC between about 2100 and the end of service were often instructed to park "at the bus stop" - the mockup platform that is located along the fence between the main yard and the west annex. This could result in buses lined up along the fence and situations of just "park wherever there's space!"

VTC has been at or close to capacity for a very long time now. When the yard is almost full, there is very little wiggle room to park buses where you want to.

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On 8/12/2019 at 2:59 AM, dover5949 said:

I don't understand why CMBC does not make use of the auxiliary power on the trolley's & instead would rather place diesel's on the routes instead? When I was in San Francisco this spring 2 trolley routes were on detour due to road construction. These 2 routes still kept the trolleys on the route & we went several miles on auxiliary power still keeping up with the posted speed limit & no pole pullers either.

 

On 8/12/2019 at 4:08 AM, Michael Marriott said:

The XT's in Seattle and San Francisco have newer generation batteries that give a longer range, and allow higher speed.  They also allow auxiliary systems, most importantly the air compressor, to operate when the bus is in battery mode.

It does make me wonder whether there is any scope for retrofitting (some at least of) the current fleet of trolleybuses with Lithium Ion batteries as in the XT40 and XT60 used in Seattle and San Francisco.

Points for consideration both positive and negative:

- Cost. A small battery pack allowing say 10 km off wire flexibility would cost how much? $100,000? Any one know?

- engineering. The XT40/60 was obviously designed to be capable of carrying the weight of the batteries. Does the E40/E60 LFR have similar structural strength to carry the weight of a Lithium Ion battery pack?  

- Given the current fleet has a further life of between 8 to 10 years maximum, wouldn't the ability to avoid  making special diesel substitutions for detours/ special events pay for the investment over the remaining life of the vehicles?

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