Tag Archives: Gillig Advantage

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.

 

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2018

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Gillig Advantage 3710

Gillig Advantage 3710

Location: Campus Drive at Union Drive, College Park, MD
Operator of Vehicle: University of Maryland Department of Transportation Services
Date of Photo: March 30, 2017

The University of Maryland Athletics Department isn’t only making news because of issues regardings its football team.  Recently, the Athletics Department announced it would help to fund some weekend services on campus that would otherwise have been discontinued this fall due to budget shortfalls.  The University of Maryland has one of the largest student operated bus systems in the United States, with nearly 3 million trips annually on board a fleet of about 60 buses.  While the system is overseen by professional staff, many system functions including dispatching, training, and operating are carried out by students most of the time.  How many of those student operators might be transit fans?

For more photos of Shuttle-UM, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: April 2018

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Gillig Advantage/HEV 4027

Gillig Advantage/HEV 4027

Location: A.W. Willis Avenue at North Main Street, Memphis, TN
Operator of Vehicle: Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA)
Date of Photo: November 25, 2017

Memphis is probably best known for its music scene and role in the civil rights movement in the United States.  However, the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) is one of Tennessee’s largest bus network.  With the Main Street Trolley heritage streetcar service in the midst of a service suspension that started in 2014, buses are the only form of public transit within the city.  In the past, MATA’s fleet had a wider variety of vehicles.  RTS models were a mainstay of the fleet from 1980 until 2010.  Buses used in the past also include GM TDH-5300 and TDH-4500 “New Looks”, Flxible 40-102 New Looks, AM General 40 foot buses, and MAN articulated buses.  Now, the fleet is made up almost entirely of Gillig Advantage low floor buses, and MATA is looking to make the fleet powered entirely by hybrid engines.  Here is one of those hybrid Gillig Advantages with the Memphis Pyramid, a sports arena that has been repurposed as a Bass Pro Sports outlet store, in the background.

 

For more photos of MATA buses, please click here. 

Bus Photo of the Month: November 2017

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Gillig Advantage/BRT 4061

Gillig Advantage/BRT 4061

Location: Medical Center Station, Bethesda, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Ride On (Montgomery County Transit)
Date of Photo: October 6, 2017

Exactly one month ago, Ride On, the county operated bus system in Montgomery County, MD, launched its first limited stop service, Route 101 or the Ride On Extra.  This route uses a special fleet of BRT styled Gillig Advantage buses.  I’m not a huge fan of WMATA’s “MetroExtra” branding for several reasons, but I really like how Ride On has taken this brand from another agency in the area and applied it to itself.  The paint scheme and name is clearly derived from WMATA, and to Ride On’s credit, the paint scheme makes it clearer that an approaching bus is a limited stop one than Metro’s scheme.  In its first month of service, I had three occasions to take this service, and found the trip to be extremely speedy, though I was admittedly riding against the peak direction of travel each time.  The buses have WiFi and USB charging ports on board, but I did not use either feature any of the times I have been on these buses.  The buses also still have that new bus smell, so be sure to check it out soon if you want to experience that, too.  The Ride On Extra currently operates between Lakeforest Mall and Medical Center Station during weekday rush hours.

For more photos of the Ride On Extra, please click here.