Clarksville Transit System rolls out more fuel-efficient Hybrid Vehicles
Clarksville, TN – The Clarksville Transit Service will place three new hybrid buses into service on February 1st, 2020 continuing a trend of updating the fleet with more modern and fuel-efficient vehicles.
These new buses replace three others that were more than 13 years old and had more than 2 million miles, collectively, on them.
“These are state-of-the-art buses that offer better fuel technology and operating efficiency, which lowers costs and is more environmentally friendly,” Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts said. “More importantly, these vehicles provide additional safety and comfort for our passengers.”
The new buses, manufactured by Gillig Corp. of Hayward, CA, are 30-foot hybrid electric heavy-duty transit buses. Each cost $670,000 and were purchased using Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) competitive grant funds, with 80 percent coming from federal sources and 10 percent coming from both the state and city.
“These three buses allow us to make a major step forward, giving us a 100 percent low-floor fleet for the first time,” CTS Director Paul Nelson said. “Now we can retire all of the remaining old standard-floor buses that have steps. These easy-access ramps make life much easier for all passengers, especially those using wheelchairs.”
The three new buses also elevate CTS’s entire fleet into a “state of good repair,” meaning that the active fleet will be within the Federal Transit Administration’s useful life benchmark for heavy-duty transit buses.
The new buses also are equipped with several features to increase their utility and improve the passenger experience. Notably, each new bus is equipped with 18 USB charging ports, which is a new feature for the CTS fleet that will allow passengers to charge phones and other devices while riding.
The new buses also will offer:
- Improved passenger seats.
- A rack that can carry two bicycles at a time.
- A fare box that accepts and validates coins, tokens and bills, and accepts and processes
magnetic fare cards and smart cards. - A surveillance system with nine cameras, providing enhanced security and safety for passengers and operators.
- A vehicle locator system that can track a specific bus for location, speed, direction of
travel and stop time.
