Six new buses rolled down the roads of the University last week, replacing the seven oldest buses in the fleet, built in the 1970s.
Four feet longer, a little wider and four to five inches taller, the new buses also allow space for more passengers. Each of the new buses costs $147,500, compared to the $250,000 cost of purchasing busses similar to the older buses, bus driver Wayne King said. The older buses that are still in use "are more of a luxury edition," he said. "The ones we just bought are glorified school buses," he said.
The new buses offer the technological improvements of the past 20 years, he continued, such as air conditioning and power steering. Bus driver Tom Noble said the new buses are "much easier to handle." The buses also include storage space underneath, allowing athletic teams to carry their equipment while traveling instead of renting additional means of transporting their equipment.
King said the new buses are being installed with a switch requiring the driver to close the back door, which formerly shut automatically 30 seconds after riders pushed it open. This switch is an additional safety check, forcing the driver to ascertain that students are not standing in the "yellow zone" area near the back door. The purchased buses also include an easy access chair lift for a wheelchair.
Steve Burrell, director of the transportation and publications department, emphasized the convenience of these features.
"As technology improves, you pick it up. Kind of like adding that CD system to the car," he said.
The increased length and width of the new buses altered the wheel base, Burrell said, so they cannot perform sharp turns-such as the one from Erwin Road to Hospital North.
The height increase meant that the new buses could not have cleared the East Campus bridge, Burrell added. As a result, officials from Duke transit and the facilities management department arranged during the summer for workers to carve out the roadway beneath the bridge at a cost of $115,000.
It was less expensive to purchase the new buses and lower the road than to buy a more expensive and shorter bus, Burrell noted. He added that obtaining the shorter buses would also require a two-year wait.
Burrell said that many factors prompted the decision to replace part of the old fleet. For example, many of the parts required for maintaining the old buses were expensive and difficult to find. He expects the new buses to last approximately eight to 10 years.
Five of the old buses were retired and sold as scrap, with two kept as extras in case of an emergency, Burrell said. In recent years, the now-retired buses were used sparingly-only during class changes and other particularly busy times.
The buses, which were used during freshman orientation week, meet with approval from many parents, Burrell said. Many of the freshmen, however, did not notice a difference between the older buses still running and the recently purchased buses.
"They're comfortable, and that's all that matters," said Trinity freshman Chris Chelius.
Burrell agreed, noting that despite the alterations to the University's bus fleet, "a bus is a bus."
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