MCTS Unveils New Buses
The Milwaukee County Transit System unveiled one of the 90 buses set to join their fleet in 2010. The new buses will replace buses operating daily that are over 16 years old. Riders will welcome a more comfortable ride, with a relocated air conditioner, new stop buttons to signal the driver of your intended departure at the front of the bus, modern interior (no more quasi-wood paneling look), and LED lighting. The new fare boxes are not yet installed. All 90 buses (with 35 more in 2011) should be operating by late fall.
New MCTS Bus
While it’s certainly exciting as a bus rider to have new buses in the fleet, it’s important to remember that this does not mean MCTS is standing on solid ground. Stimulus funding made this one-time shot in the arm possible. In the absence of a dedicated funding source, large cuts are coming to MCTS in the next year. To learn more about that visit the Coalition for Advancing Transit website.
The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) announced today that the first of the new fleet of 90 new Clean Diesel Nero Zero Emission vehicles has arrived. County officials will view this greener bus at the Milwaukee County Court House, 909 N 10th St at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 14.
The total cost of the 90 buses is $32,995,506 in which $16,396,889 are funds received from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. An additional 35 buses will arrive in 2011 and will be purchased through Milwaukee County.
Included below is a photo gallery of shots of the new bus.
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- New Bus Interior
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- Might just have been a wish on my list, but the front of the bus stop will prevent one from having to yell to the driver or reach back for the cable.
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- The familiar bike racks will be on all of the new buses.
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- MCTS Bus. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
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- The back of the new buses
They look really nice but I was hoping the new ones would have the route number on an LED screen on the back of the bus like most transit systems do. That is very useful for knowing if you just missed your bus at stops that service lots of routes.
The link to the Coalition for Advancing Transit website does not seem to work.
Are new buses the wisest thing to spend stimulus money on? I mean, the old buses didn’t seem so bad to me. Are they maintenance costs really so high that this saves money? Are they able to get some money back by selling to old buses, to say, some city in Mexico?
@Nick The old buses were years (hello deferred maintenance) beyond there useful life, breaking down, causing delays, discouraging ridership.
@Eric Thanks for the heads up… I’ve fixed the link.
The new buses looks just like the old buses
Any news on fuel economy/emissions differences between the old and new buses?
@Matt I agree completely that having route numbers on the back of buses would be very helpful for anyone who boards buses downtown or anywhere else that multiple bus routes run on the same street.
The buses were made by New Flyer, in case one was wondering! Nice buses! Same builder as the older buses there.
What a relief for all of the valint crew that was doing a super job of trying to keep that old fleet moving. Let’s all remember that, as Jeramey mentioned, this is a one time shot in the arm for a rapidly decaying system that is vital to our economic life.
Anyone know if these new buses are any quieter than the old buses?
@GT No way do they look like the old buses, except for the fact that they’re buses. They look fantastic, hopefully they encourages even the slightest of increased ridership.
Encouraging to see these! I’m sure riders will feel a lot more comfortable and satisfied with buses that represent the 21st Century now. =)
I feel the new bus are great i been ride the bus seen i was little and Milwaukee has come a long way and i don’t like the old bus because when it rain outside it rain and side the bus and i been on the old bus and they need to be replace bad they 12 years old now come on people wake up its time for a change and im happy for mcts fro being us these new bus i be more happy to ride the bus now.
About time we got some new buses down here. I hope they’re considerably quieter than the old buses – I could hear those things from 15 stories up, and they don’t get any quieter as you get closer to the street. The new interior looks much nicer than the one in the current buses, and hopefully that combined with greater comfort will result in an increase in ridership.
@ Jerad. I ride the bus every day. Its the same interior, just a different color scheme. It will be nice to have something newer that is hopefully quieter and more efficient, but I’m not filled with awe with what I saw above.
I got the chance to ride on one of the new busses this weekend, and the rider experience was pretty much unchanged for me, aside from being very blue inside, but I’ll get used to it. FYI, the buttons near the front of the bus aren’t new with the clean diesel busses–much of the fleet already has them.
As someone previously living in Europe, I found the new MCTS buses’ look old. I didn’t even realize they were actually brand new buses, until I stumbled upon Urban Milwaukee website. They should have used fresher colors or hired an ad agency to do some new graphics, and also to begin with hire an industrial designer for just aesthetics and function. Couple of examples below for what is considered modern in today’s bus world (personally I don’t like all of them, but there are some nice gems in here and there).
http://www.avtobusi.com/cgi-bin/e-cms/vis/vis.pl?s=001&p=0084&n=000008&prfr=1&g=&prev=
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=71143901