12-07-2020, 11:48 PM
(12-07-2020, 05:29 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I am sure they are doing a cost analysis, but I'm saying the improvement is probably not much, if fuel economy is 20% better, and the buses were half as much, it's still possible we're saying less than 10% of the cost of those routes.
I often hear of smaller buses (sometimes even vans or cars) being a magic bullet for better transit, and in general, I don't think that's the case. Frequency is absolutely important, but I suspect most routes which are seeing smaller buses are not seeing a high frequency...transit agencies like ours are barely willing to prioritize frequency over cost on heavily used routes.
Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.