The CTA recently started using 6 Proterra Buses on the Route 66 Chicago Ave bus. Come along of a ride! I’m sorry about the poor audio quality. I need to upgrade my camera.
Been Trying to Ride the Proterra's Out here in Suburban L.A. for Foothill Transit, but its Hit & Miss, I've Only Ridden the BYD Busses that Long Beach Transit Operates & they Run Good, Despite Bad Stories of Quality from BYD.
@@dangelohartley5977 They DAMN well Better! BYD is Building the 1st of Metro's 65 Busses they Ordered a Couple of Years Ago, 60 40 Footers for the J Line (Silver) & 5 Artics for the G Line (Orange), to go with the New Flyer B.E.B. Artics already on the G Line a Couple of Prototypes have been Assembled at its Plant 70 Miles North of Downtown L.A. in Lancaster, Calif in Northern L.A. County, Proterra has its Plant in the San Gabriel Valley in the City of Industry in Eastern L.A. County & Built Foothill Transit's Newer 40 Foot Busses. But as for BYD, its Quality got A Bad Rap, Mainly due to Battery Issues, Metro Recieved 5 40 Footers Over 5 Years ago the 1000 Series & was Assigned to its Division One Bus Yard. & Problems Began... Busses were Tested on its Busy Lines 16 & 18, there were Issues that the BYD's were Slow Climbing Up 5th St over the 110 Freeway, West of Downtown L.A. the Battery Life was at 100% Range & there were some Breakdowns, Metro Pulled the Busses Out of Service, BYD Bought them Back, Metro Got Credit from those Busses for the 5 Artics on Order for the G Line & its a Wait & See for Metro when they Recieve these Busses. In Addition Long Beach Transit, also in L.A. County Has 10 in its Fleet & Another 14 or 15 on Order with BYD & they had Small Issues with its Busses, also UCLA has them in their Fleet also & G-Trans, Gardena's Bus System also in L.A. County has about 2, but I haven't seen their BYD's in a while.
@@waynewright2886 Indygo in Indianapolis, IN got some 60ft articulated BYD buses (K11M) in 2018 & 2019 and experienced problems with the buses, mainly the battery as you mentioned before.
Love your in-depth observation and discussion with drivers! This is a big step forward for eco-environmental friendly transit! It definitely reminds me the San Francisco trolley bus, fast acceleration with the motor sound. The rear door is a great improvement! No need to hold the door any more!
Madison, WI's bus network seemed to just have bought a couple sets of these as well, I was bewildered by the strange humpback on these buses when I first saw them. Hopefully they should provide an economical and effective service for the area!
Must say, these buses do sound similar to the SWITCH Metrocity here in the UK. Never did I think EVs could sound so good. As well as that, Sliding rear doors also mean that the risk of having your feet trapped in the doors is nonexistent
Wow so quiet. Like riding the PATH train. As someone who lives next to a bus line, would be great if all coach buses got electrified and as quiet as this one. Go Proterra!
I love your in-depth observation and discussion with drivers to the point where I should get up and do the same too. These buses are nice especially with the LCD screens and the rear windows. By the way, CTA has ordered a contract on February 2021 for the purchase of 100 (an additional 500 if all options are exercised) clean-diesel buses form Nova. We also got the 7000-series railcars running revenue service for testing.
I think the CTA(Chicago Transit Authority)has sure picked a winner with this Proterra Electric Transit Bus-The drivers also like it too and so do the passengers
I'm not a fan of the electric New Flyer buses but these buses are pretty good from what I heard. Also CTA will not go full electric by 2030. An average bus life is about 12 years and CTA is getting more Novabus Diesel buses next year which won't be gone until around 2034.
We Have the 60 Foot B.E.B. Artics here in L.A. for Metro's G Line (Orange) & they Run Smooth 24/7 & No Complaints Yet, its the 5 B.E.B Artics that the G Line will Recieve from BYD & as you Heard BYD has Quality Issues with its Busses.
Yes. BYD is pretty bad. Heard LA tried them out once but failed but they giving them another try. Imma be honest, when these electric buses take over, riding CTA buses will never be the same. Gonna miss the diesel and hybrid buses, the buses k grew up with. I'mma enjoy them while they still here because they will be outta here by 2040.
@@ajaytransitproductions Metro Ordered 65 BYD Busses, 60 Forty Footers for the J Line (Silver) & 5 60 Footers for the G Line (Orange), the 1st 5 BYD 40 Footers Failed because of Battery Limit at 100 Miles & Busses assigned to Lines 16 & 18 couldn't Climb up Hills Fast Enough & Other Issues.
I actually prefer diesel buses over electric ones. I like the sound an engine makes when it roars and with electric buses you’re basically turning it into a library which I something I dislike.
@@ajaytransitproductions The Cheeky Broward County Transit was trying before the pandemic you can see it on I-95 then all of a sudden they stopped byd buses a switch to proterra
What I didn’t include is that a couple times, the operator didn’t park the bus in exactly the right location and the bus wouldn’t charge. They had to re-set the charger and back up or move forward and then deploy the charger again. Hopefully this is just an operator training issue and once drivers have enough practice they know how to do this successfully 99% or 100% of the time.
Yes, but I wish we had so many more. I've been to London and love how quiet the streets are because (in part) of all the electric buses. They are wonderful to ride, quiet and smooth! From Wikipedia, "There are 3,835 hybrid buses, 950 battery electric buses, and 20 hydrogen fuel cell buses operating in London, as of March 2023, out of a total bus fleet of 8,643 - this is around 56% of the bus fleet."
Man those are some really nice electric buses, I believe they're made by Proterra... If so there $900.000 each.. replacing all 1800 of our CTA fleet of buses is going to run the city $1.6 billion. Not including the charging stations.
But then again maintaining our fleet of CTA buses is around 5 to 7 million a year, not including almost a million dollars just in fuel.. so this could actually be a great benefit to Chicago.
$900,000 per bus. Yes it’s expensive compared to most buses around 4-500K. The prices will come down. Also these buses are cheaper operate and maintain.
$900,000 per bus. Yes it’s expensive compared to most buses around 4-500K. The prices will come down. Also these buses are cheaper operate and maintain.
I heard that they've been having issues with heating in the winter using up more energy than the drivetrain itself and that they have to carry around a diesel oil furnace heater on board for extreme cold (not every day cold but the rare polar vortex level cold snaps). Why? Because they have not fitted these buses with heat pumps... which makes no sense to me. Hopefully they retrofit these buses with heat pump systems and larger battery packs in the future to make them way more efficient and to not require an on board diesel oil supplementary heater.
2040? I bet they'll do it by 2030 after they finish their testing. Saving $, more pleasant riding experience, cleaner air. Everyone wants those things.
Not true. CTA has placed a order of more diesel buses from a company called Novabus to place some of the most of the older buses(including the box shaped buses that you see everywhere).
The Proterra's have been holding up well with the New York City MTA, so they should do well in the long run in Chicago, hopefully these buses can officially call Chi-Town home.
We Aint got Proterra here in L.A. Foothill Transit Does, its California Factory is in the San Gabriel Valley, Nearly 30 Miles from L.A. in Eastern L.A. County. Metro Already has 40 BEB New Flyer Artics for its G Line (Orange) in Service & will have 60 BEB BYD 40 Footers for the J Line (Silver) Plus 5 Artics for the G Line Also. The BYD Factory is 70 Miles North in Lancaster in Northern L.A. County & its Crazy Busy Building Busses for Agencies. But I Wish Metro would Snag the Proterras for its Fleet in the Future.
I think they are running every day, probably from 5am-midnight or something like that. There are only 2 or 3 buses operating at a time so you may have to wait up to 45 minutes to see an electric bus pass by.
15 min rapid charge at the end of the route? Never work on alot of the routes. They don't give us enough time to do the route itself. Get to the end pull in and pull out. Especially on the weekends.
oh yeah! buses manufactured around Can o' duhh customarily catch on fire....the lengths that mobby Montreal went to hide this scariness from the public....their engines become i n f e r n a l in less than 2 minutes' time
@@Luke_Starkenburg There was a small fire that put #700 out of service for a few years but both have recently returned to service as of last year. I prefer them because they're more of a proven manufacture than Proterra right now, Also New Flyer has a variety of options to choose from that CTA could of went with.
@@nascarfan20105 So far, only 701 is back. I haven't seen 700 yet. The XE40's are now equipped with a overhead fast charging similar to the Proterra Catalyst BE40's
Not only bioelectricity, also we need buses that runs on biofuels, green hydrogen and e fuels, for sustainable balance and green, all working together, we will get the net 0. ♻️
Montreal bus acquisitions omit the adjoined pair of forward-facing seats for several years already; no longer any chance of _that_ idle admiration of lovers on a city bus ride if you catch my drift....oh! and *too* few stanchions/grab bars all in some abominal quest at granting access to multiple disabled; the operator gets quite an earfull from me, because they've not re-humanised the seating on the new fleets that c h a o t i c a l l y jeopardised more than one dozen elderlies who'd boarded at an east end bus stop here, i.e., nothing to grab onto to acclimatise to the refreshed advent of augmented accelerations nowadays....the fear and anguish on those 80- and 90-year-olds' faces as they flailed about still haunts me, one third of them had tumbled onto the floor, nothing short of c r u e l terror was what that ride bore them :pfft:
he's talking about a whole new all-electric power supply (see another link to a youtube video that Jcolby'd posted in an earlier[?] thread here), but I've a hunch it be wholly unhealthy....spikes in cancer rates, for instance, occured everytime industrialists augmented electricity in its various forms at advancement (ha ha) for over a century already....and wavelength happens to have been the signature of the debilitating ailments....sheds light on manufactured human dissatisfaction, no?
