Tag Archives: New Flyer D60HF

Bus Photo of the Month: August 2020

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New Flyer D60HF 3014

New Flyer D60HF 3014

Location: Alma Street at W 10th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Operator of Vehicle: Coast Mountain Bus Company (CMBC)
Date of Photo: August 6, 2007

What does a bus line have to do in order to keep its traditional branding when other routes with the same branding are rebranded?  Being the most used bus route in Canada and the United States apparently helps.  For many years, there were a handful of bus routes in Vancouver called “B-Lines” that offered high frequency, limited stop service.  Two of them were replaced by Skytrain extensions over the years.  Earlier this year, TransLink decided to rebrand two of them under its new RapidBus brand, but the 99 B-Line that connects the Commercial-Broadway transit hub with the University of British Columbia campus, is retaining the B-Line branding.  Ultimately, the 99 B-Line will be phased out when SkyTrain’s Millennium Line is extended to UBC, and this is the primary reason I’ve found that explains why the route designation wasn’t changed.  However, serving an average of 55,900 passengers daily (as of 2018) probably doesn’t hurt the avoiding rebranding effort.

In addition to being the busiest bus route in either the US or Canada, the 99 B-Line also has the distinction of being the first Vancouver area bus route to have all door boarding with fare inspections to ensure that all passengers have paid.

For more photos of CMBC New Flyer buses, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: June 2020

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New Flyer D60HF 5519

New Flyer D60HF 5519

Location: Lexington Avenue at East 75th Street, New York, NY
Operator of Vehicle: MTA New York City Transit
Date of Photo: April 25, 2012

I’ve spilled some digital ink on the retirement of various New York City Subway cars and the venerable RTS buses, but other buses in New York City that have distinctions of their own have been retired in the time I was redesigning the New York City section of this website.  This post will profile one of them, the New Flyer D60HF, the first articulated bus to operate in the Big Apple.  

The first D60HF buses arrived in 1996 and debuted in The Bronx on the Bx1 route.  In late 1999, they were introduced to Manhattan on the M79 and M86 routes.  Ultimately, New York City Transit (and the MTA Bus Company) would order and operate several hundred D60HF buses.  For most of their careers, they operated in The Bronx and Manhattan.  They also made some appearances on routes in Queens and Brooklyn towards the end of their careers in New York.

In addition to being the first articulated buses in New York and the only high floor articulated bus model ever ordered by NYCT, the D60HF was one of the first bus models in New York to be built with a front door wheelchair lift, and was the bus type that was used when the first Select Bus Service route, the Bx12, was launched in 2008.

As a busfan, I enjoy getting to ride articulated buses, and I really enjoyed sitting in the pair of seats in the D60HF’s articulated joint.  However, commuters were not always as excited by the sight of articulated buses on their routes.  When converting a route from standard buses to articulated buses, the MTA often reduces the frequency of the buses slightly since each articulated bus can carry more people than a standard 40 foot bus.  

Although the D60HF made its last revenue trip on March 31, 2019, articulated buses remain a significant part of New York City’s bus fleet.  They operate in four of the five boroughs, and while some of the articulated buses in the current fleet were built by NovaBUS, New Flyer’s articulated Xcelsior model has replaced some of their D60HF predecessors.  

For more photos of NYCT’s New Flyer D60HF Buses, please click here.