Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Ontario cities love their salt. It's everywhere. It keeps the roads clean (from my observations Ontario has better snow clearing than Quebec) but it does shorten the life of cars and especially the life of buses. Ontario cities all have very young bus fleets, it's very rare to find a transit bus in Ontario from the 20th century, whereas many other provinces have cities that continue to drive buses from the 1980s/1990s. You see this right here in the capital. All Ottawa buses are from 2004 or later whereas the Gatineau bus fleet is filled with buses from late 1980s & early 1990s.
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Isn't Quebec the province where the salt usage is so high, everyone buys cheap cars because they'll disintegrate within a decade anyway?
Ontario has a law requiring all bus fleets in the province to be both modern and fully accessible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by niwell
Toronto's oldest buses are from 1996 I believe, and yes they are AODA compliant. The main reason for the longevity of buses in Toronto is actually the standard of maintenance for the fleet. Buses are essentially rebuilt from the ground up near the end of their normal service life. Not many places do this, and I've heard that other transit systems are actually a bit envious of the capability. I'd imagine it takes a lot of time and effort in start-up to do this but once you have a system would save money in the long run. And their is greater certainty as the procurement process can be affected by political will.
http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2013/12/30/ttc_rebuilds_its_fleet_one_bus_at_a_time.html |
Thunder Bay does this. I think we actually send the buses to the TTC to have it done, even. Our oldest buses buses have odometers over 1,000,000. The average retired bus is around the 1.15 to 1.2 million km mark. The oldest in the fleet are two 1997 Novabuses, still in active service. The 2004 Orion VIIs (not even sure why we got them) get used the least because the steering is "weird".
The fleet has only 49 buses, and they've always done a good job maintaining them.
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