Melinda Tuhus Photo
Bigger, greener buses are coming to New Haven. Whalley Avenue rider Breeon Jackson looks forward to having more room.
The state is ordering 28 new buses for New Haven, including some that will hold 35 to 40 percent more passengers.
Half the new buses will be the standard 40-foot size, all diesel-electric hybrids. The other half will be 60-foot “articulated” models (they bend in the middle), including a few hybrids. They’re part of a total order of 131 buses for the five metro areas served by CT Transit — New Haven, Hartford, Stamford, Waterbury and New Britain.
Michael Sanders, transit administrator for the state Department of Transportation, said the order was placed at the end of 2009. With a 52-week delivery schedule, the buses should start arriving late this fall and all be on the road by mid-winter 2011.
The $70.9 million for purchasing the buses come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the federal “stimulus”), which is also paying for much of the cost of upgrading to hybrid technology.
In addition, $2.5 million from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program is coming from federal highway funds for the hybrid upgrade.
Finally, $7 million in stimulus money is being funneled through another federal fund called TIGGER (Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction) — part of which will fund the buses and part of which will fund a fuel cell project.
The articulated buses (like the one pictured above, from Los Angeles) are a common sight in big American cities.
Does a smaller town like New Haven need them?
“Some routes are very high-capacity routes,” Sanders said, “and we can add extra seats without adding a driver, saving labor costs while increasing service with the same schedule.” He said Whalley Avenue and Route 1 are likely candidates to get the bigger buses, though no final decision has been made. “We will look at where crowding is greatest,” and then decide, he said.
Around 5:15 one recent weekday afternoon, eight people were waiting at the bus stop at the downtown end of Whalley Avenue. Just as a reporter pulled up, so did the B bus, already full. As the new passengers climbed on and squeezed in, several expressed enthusiasm for a bigger bus to ease crowding.
Right after the bus pulled away, Jackson (pictured at the top of the story) appeared at the stop. He said he’s homeless and he rides the bus at all hours, sometimes back and forth to shelters. Running through the hours in the day, he said the crowding is worst “at shift changes,” especially in the late afternoon when office workers and hospital employees are leaving work and second-shift workers are clocking in.
When the next bus (pictured) pulled up to the stop, it was also mostly full.
Standard buses have 40 seats. The bigger ones have 55. Sanders said bus ridership throughout the state is up 10 percent over 2005, though it dipped beginning in September 2008 before climbing back this year. “We took a hit [in ‘08] when gas prices dropped down [from the record $4 a gallon that summer]. That caused a loss of ridership because people went back to driving their cars. Then the recession hit,” with an increase in layoffs that also affected ridership.
He said drivers assigned to routes that use the articulated buses will be trained on driving the behemoths that bend in the middle.
The new buses “are a very good idea,” said Karen Burnaska, coordinator of Transit for Connecticut, a coalition of 30 business, environmental, transportation, planning and civic groups throughout the state, funded by a grant administered by Connecticut Fund for the Environment. The technology is “extremely good for the environment because it helps reduce carbon emissions and will improve air quality in the state.” (New Haven and Fairfield counties are “out of compliance” with federal clear air standards.) “It’s also good,” Burnaska continued, “because they are high-tech — they’re sleek, they look good. For some people who have a negative image of buses as big clunky vehicles with fumes coming out of them — these are nice-looking and comfortable and clean. A lot of people want to do something to help the environment and this is one way they can do it — get out of their cars and ride the bus.”
So what’s going to happen to the buses that are being replaced? In accordance with federal requirements, Sanders wrote in an email message, they will be sold at auction. “Given the age of the buses — most of them 14 to 16 years old — they are typically sold to scrap dealers. We will usually hold on to the best of the retired buses and keep them in a contingency fleet to be used in emergencies.”