United States Department of Transportation
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Abstract:Escalating transit deficits have led the transit industry to search for methods for improving productivity and reducing operating costs. In seeking these objectives, there has been renewed interest in the cost-saving potential of high-capacity articulated buses. This study examines the performance of articulated buses under actual operating conditions. It documents current applications of these vehicles in revenue service, service characteristics in these settings, maintenance experience to date, and the costs and benefits of articulated bus utilization in comparison to comparable deployments of conventional coaches. This study is based on experiences in eleven cities with the articulated bus manufactured by Maschinenfabriken-Augsburg-Nurnberg (MAN) Aktiengesellschaft of West Germany, in partnership with AM General (AMG) of the United States. The eleven cities are: Seattle, Washington; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; Oakland, California; San Francisco/Marin County, California; Los Angeles, California; San Diego, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Washington, DC; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The AMG/MAN vehicles are the only articulated buses in use in the United States in sufficient numbers to permit evaluation of their performance and service impacts. The 60-foot AMG/MAN bus has a capacity approximately 50 percent more than that of a 40-foot conventional bus, which makes it possible to substitute articulated buses for conventional buses in some fractional ratio. The major attractiveness of articulated buses is the driver labor cost savings which results from the elimination of in-service buses when articulated buses are substituted in such a fractional ratio. On the other hand, the articulated bus has a capital cost of 80 to 100 percent higher than that of a conventional bus, requires more costly and frequent maintenance, and takes somewhat longer to complete in-service runs due principally to differences in dwell times at stops. The authors point out that the analysis conducted suggests that the substitution of articulated buses for conventional coaches may not necessarily be cost-beneficial in many instances. Where articulated buses are substituted in some fractional ratio less than one, longer wait times and in-vehicle times are among the likely impacts which must be traded off along with the cost savings that can often be achieved. Careful analysis is, therefore, required to judge the merits of any local application.
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