Tag Archives: Gillig Advantage

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2025

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Gillig Advantage 8003

Location: 46th Street at Minnehaha Avenue
Operator of Vehicle: Metro Transit
Date of Photo: April 12, 2017

The Minnesota State Fair closed yesterday, marking the end of the 2025 edition of the event and one of the busiest weeks for transit agencies in the Minneapolis and Saint Paul area.  The Minnesota State Fair takes place in Falcon Heights, a suburb located between the two twin cities.  In order to facilitate the arrival and departure of fair attendees, a total of 13 special express bus routes operate from outlying park and ride lots to the fairgrounds, as an alternative to driving to the fairgrounds themselves.  Of the 13 express routes, 6 are operated by Metro Transit, 3 are operated by Minnesota Valley Transit Authority, and 4 are operated by SouthWest Transit.  However, regular service also serves the fairgrounds, including the A Line, which was Metro Transit’s first BRT line when it opened in 2016.  Operating along the Snelling Avenue corridor, the A Line transports over 3,700 people per day (as of 2024) between Rosedale and the 46th Street Blue Line Station, passing not only the fairgrounds but also other important destinations such as Minnehaha Park, Macalester College, Allianz Field, Hamline University, and Har Mar Mall.  The A Line was the first bus line in the Twin Cities area to offer payment before boarding the bus, platforms level with the bus, and all door boarding to improve trip times.

For more photos of Metro Transit buses, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: October 2024

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Gillig Advantage 4058

Location: Rockville Pike near Wooton Parkway, Rockville, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Ride On (Montgomery County Transit)
Date of Photo: June 21, 2024

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the launch of Ride On Extra in Montgomery County, Maryland.  Ride On Extra is the branded service for Ride On’s “premium” bus routes.  The first route to operate under this banner is Route 101, a limited stop service along MD 355 between Lakeforest and Medical Center.  The trip time on the 101, both advertised and actual, is noticeably shorter than the underlying local service on routes 46 and 55, and depending on the circumstances, can even give the parallel Red Line a run for its money.

Last month, Ride On launched the first two routes of the Great Seneca Transit Network (GTSN), a series of improvements to the transit service in the “Great Seneca Science Corridor”, an area that includes locations such as the Shady Grove Metro, Shady Grove Hospital, Universities at Shady Grove, the Rio Center, and Kentlands.  These two routes have colored names, Lime and Pink; I believe this is to go along with the colored names that are also being used for the “Flash BRT” service that Ride On operates in the Route 29 corridor and will introduce to other corridors in the future.  Unlike the 101, the Lime and Pink operate seven days a week with service frequencies varying between 15 and 30 minutes depending upon the day of the week and time of day.  

Ride On is also engaged in the “Ride On Reimagined” project, which is a network redesign project that may introduce more Ride On Extra routes in the future as well.  It will definitely be interesting to see how Ride On Extra, in conjunction with the Flash BRT and other improvements, will change the transit landscape in Montgomery County.  

For more photos of Ride On’s Gillig Advantage 40 foot buses, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: May 2024

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Gillig Advantage 5627

Location: Roberto Clemente Bridge, Pittsburgh, PA
Operator of Vehicle: Port Authority of Allegheny County
Date of Photo: October 21, 2020

I’m a huge baseball fan and have aspirations of making it to every Major League stadium at some point.  With a visit to Pittsburgh last month that included taking in a game at PNC Park, I’ve now visited 13 of 30 (as well as some stadiums that are no longer in use).  There are many reasons to like the Pirates’ home stadium, one of which is the experience of walking across the Roberto Clemente Bridge from Downtown Pittsburgh to the North Shore where the stadium is located.  Prior to games, the bridge is closed to vehicular traffic and is exclusively used by pedestrians.  At the north end of the bridge, immediately behind where I was standing to take this photo, is one of the entrances to PNC Park and a statue of Roberto Clemente, the Pirates’ hall of fame outfielder for whom the bridge is named after.  

Currently, no bus routes use the Roberto Clemente Bridge.  However, in the fall of 2020 when this photo was taken, the nearby Rachel Carson Bridge was closed for rehabilitation so some bus routes were rerouted over the Clemente Bridge.  In addition, the pandemic meant that the baseball games that were played that year were played in empty stadiums, so the scene outside PNC Park that year often looked like this, with little traffic of any type crossing the bridge, whether that be cars, buses, or pedestrians.

For more photos of Pittsburgh buses, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: April 2023

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Gillig Advantage 8005

Location: Snelling Avenue at University Avenue, St. Paul, MN
Operator of Vehicle: Metro Transit
Date of Photo: April 12, 2017

Six years ago this month, I rode the Metro A Line in Minneapolis and Saint Paul for the first (and to date only) time.  There are now two additional BRT routes in the Twin Cities, but this is the first one to have opened.  The A Line incorporates some standard features of bus rapid transit in order to provide improved trip times over the local bus service in that same corridor.  Most notably, these are priority signaling at intersections, off board fare collection, all door boarding, wider doors, and high profile station designs with level boarding, on demand heating during the winter months, and other features.  However, Metro Transit opted not to construct bus lanes in this corridor, saying that they would not significantly improve travel times.  Despite the lack of bus lanes, travel times along the A Line have decreased since the line first opened and ridership has increased.  Some even call the A Line the best bus route in the entire United States.  

Have you been on the A Line?  Do you have thoughts about what the best bus route in the United States (or somewhere else) might be?  How do you even determine what the best bus route is?  Leave a comment below in response to any or all of these questions!

For more photos of Metro Transit buses, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: October 2022

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Gillig Advantage/BRT 4060

Location: Rockville Pike at Edmonston Drive, Rockville, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Montgomery County 
Date of Photo: October 11, 2017

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the launch of Ride On Extra, a limited stop service operated by Ride On between Lakeforest Mall and Medical Center Metro Station along MD Route 355.  The route, also known as Route 101, only makes 13 stops compared to the 80 stops on underlying local services on routes 46 and 55, significantly cutting travel times along this busy corridor.  The buses also feature onboard WiFi and USB charging ports.  

Service was suspended at various times during the pandemic and my travel patterns haven’t given me occasion to use this route recently, but I found the route to be quite useful when I have been able to use it.  This route is a precursor to bus rapid transit service on this corridor, and like the Route 129, this route will be discontinued when that service begins.  However, with the MD 355 BRT line only in the preliminary engineering stage, it is unlikely that construction will begin prior to the 2025 to 2028 timeframe.  In other words, it looks like Ride On Extra will be celebrating a few more anniversaries before it is replaced by Flash BRT service.

For more photos of Ride On Gillig Advantage buses, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: July 2021

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Gillig Advantage 6200

Location: Lincoln Street at Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO
Operator of Vehicle: Regional Transportation District (RTD)
Date of Photo: January 24, 2020

I typically try to post the photos of the month on the first two days of each month.  The calendar flipped to July 2021 while I was in the middle of nearly three consecutive weeks of travel (for a mix of business and pleasure), and I wasn’t able to queue up a bus photo to run ahead of time.  So here is a photo from my last pre-pandemic travels, which included a weekend in Denver to celebrate a friend’s wedding.  No other stories to share on this one, just enjoy the photo (and that I/we are back to traveling again)!

For more photos of Denver RTD buses, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: December 2020

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Gillig Advantage 6325Gillig Advantage 6325

Location: Stanwix Street at Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
Operator of Vehicle: Port Authority of Allegheny County
Date of Photo: December 1, 2019

You’ve probably heard this before, but we are supposed to be preparing for a holiday season like no other this year.  However, a number of transit agencies are planning to go ahead with celebrating the Christmas season this year as they usually do or with some modifications in place.  For example, the CTA Holiday Train and CTA Holiday Bus will operate in Chicago but without passengers.  MDOT MTA’s Holiday Bus will be operating as usual, and per tradition, anyone who manages to catch it will get a free ride.  However, some traditions are on pause this year, such as the New York City Transit’s operation of its vintage train along 6th Avenue.  

In Pittsburgh, the Port Authority of Allegheny County has had a custom of decorating several buses for Christmas (and occasionally for other holidays as well), and one of those decorated buses is featured here.  The wreath and candy canes on the bike rack and the reindeer horns on the rear view mirrors aren’t the only decorations, the rear of the bus and the interior are decked out as well (see below).  However, it appears Pittsburgh’s holiday custom is among those that will not be observed this year.

Do you have any favorite holiday traditions that are observed by a specific transit agency?  Share them in the comments below.

Gillig Advantage Interior
Gillig Advantage Interior
Gillig Advantage 6325

For more photos of Port Authority of Allegheny County buses, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: July 2020

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Gillig Advantage 59096

Gillig Advantage 59096

Location: Downtown Sarasota Transfer Station, Sarasota, FL
Operator of Vehicle: Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT)
Date of Photo: March 15, 2019

Usually bus routes are operated by a single agency, for as one can imagine, coordinating service across multiple agencies is potentially quite challenging.  As it is, even within a single agency, the overwhelming majority of agencies often avoid splitting the operation of a single route among different garages when possible.  And the other split agency operation that I can think of (routes 400 and 402 connecting Jerusalem and Bnei Brak in Israel) was changed to have a single operator for each route in order to simplify the service.  Yet the bus route connecting Sarasota and Bradenton, one of the busiest transit lines on the Florida Suncoast, is a split operation between Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT) and Sarasota County Area Transit (SCAT).  In preparing the new Tampa Bay & Florida Suncoast section, I was unable to find any explanation for how this split operation came to be or any other historical information, though I did find proposed plans to have MCAT operate the entire route on its own.  

Do you know how this split operation on the 99 between Sarasota and Bradenton came about?  Can you think of another example of a route operated by multiple agencies like this?  If so, please leave a comment below, as I (and I’m sure others) would love to learn more about these unique operations.

For more photos of Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT) buses, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: December 2019

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Gillig Advantage 606

Gillig Advantage 606

Location: Campus Road at Central Avenue, Ithaca, NY
Operator of Vehicle: Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit
Date of Photo: February 14, 2007

In some places, it doesn’t take more than a few snowflakes to shut down transit service.  In others, snow needs to be measured in feet before that thought even crosses anyone’s mind.  TCAT in Ithaca, New York is quite familiar with winter weather and knows how to operate in it.  Same goes for the other local institutions in the area, such as Cornell University, which rarely cancels classes due to snowfall.  However, it does happen on rare occasions, such as yesterday, when nearly a foot of snow fell as students were returning from Thanksgiving break.  It was one of Cornell’s rare snow days, the university has only had four complete shutdowns for snow in the past 26 years.

In light of this, it seemed appropriate to share a photo from another Cornell Snow Day, albeit a partial one (classes weren’t cancelled until about 10:00 AM) on February 14, 2007.  TCAT kept the buses running for much of the morning, ultimately suspending service after the university closure took effect.  

For more photos of TCAT’s Gillig Advantage Buses, please click here.

 

Bus Photo of the Month: November 2019

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Gillig Advantage 4019

Gillig Advantage 4019

Location: West Summit Hill Drive, Knoxville, TN
Operator of Vehicle: Knoxville Area Transit (KAT)
Date of Photo: November 28, 2014

My family never had any particularly strong Thanksgiving traditions.  However, Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page comes from a family that has been gathering for a family reunion each Thanksgiving for decades.  There are two significant upsides to this situation.  The first is that there is virtually no discussion about whose family we spend the holiday with, which is a topic that I understand to be a difficult one in some homes.  The second (and the one probably of more interest to the people reading this) is that since the reunion moves from place to place each year, I have had the opportunity to photograph and ride transit in places that I had never been previously (though that streak comes to an end this year as the reunion returns to a “repeat” location since I’ve been invited for the first time).  Within this second upside, there is an upside and a downside.  The upside is that many transit agencies operate a regular, weekday schedule on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which means transit fans such as myself get to enjoy rush hour frequencies on a day with less street traffic, which is a pleasure.  The downside is that service is sometimes limited over the holiday weekend, resulting in situations such as what I experienced when we were in Knoxville for Thanksgiving in 2014.  Knoxville Area Transit doesn’t have a particularly large transit system to begin with, so the holiday schedules coupled with the long headways in that system resulted in my getting a single transit photo during the reunion there.  So in honor of the holiday at the end of this month, for the Bus Photo of the Month for November 2019, I present my lone photo (to date) from Knoxville, TN.  

For more information about Knoxville Area Transit, please click here.