Two of the refurbished mall shuttles cross Cleveland Place on the way to Civic Center Station. Photo by Matthew Roberts, Rocky Mountain Independent.

RTD’s two-year program to refurbish its fleet of three dozen shuttle buses that work the 16th Street Mall came in more than 25 percent under budget, through such techniques as in-house fabrication of new components and substitution of less expensive materials.

The 36 buses are the most used vehicles in RTD’s inventory, accelerating and braking to a stop 15 times during each trip up or down the granite-paved mall.

The transit agency expected to spend $3 million on the effort. The last bus recently came out of the District Shops facility at 31st Street and Ringsby Court, and the tab comes to $2.2 million.

The new buses have brighter LED interior lighting as well as new headlight and taillight assemblies. The LED lighting draws less power than the old lights, helping extend battery life, and the new fistures are easier for overnight maintenance crews to clean. The buses also have new split rear windows, floors, security cameras and other upgrades visible to the rider.

Some of the improvements are not as visible. The buses originally had automated wheelchair lifts that were prone to malfunctions, especially after snow and standing water built up inside the mechanisms.

The new lifts are hand-powered by a lever that is easily operated by the driver – eliminating the chance of malfunctions.

“We used in-house expertise to perform engineering design and integration of systems,” said Lou Ha, RTD’s manager of technical services. “This enabled us to bypass expensive pre-packaged systems. Instead, we bought separate components, engineered and integrated them in-house.

“For example, our engineers and technicians redesigned the bus wheelchair ramps from a complicated and unreliable electro-mechanical system to a simple manually operated system, and assembled individual parts to make the system work.

The approach of buying separate pieces and having RTD workers design, engineer, fabricate and install them applied to other areas as well.

“We purchased separate components for the interior LED lights and integrated the components to a complete LED light system for installation,” Ha said.

“We selected better cost-efficient materials and processes. For example, we used aluminum panels to replace the exterior panels on the buses in place of plastic panels that were used originally. Aluminum panels are less expensive, easier to cut and form, and have better durability.

“Originally we planned to replace all cracked panels on the interior of the buses with new ones. However, we came up with a better process to repair the cracked panels instead, and paint the entire interior to cover the repairs and allowed a consistent and new look inside the buses. This saved material and labor costs and allows future repairs to be carried out more easily.”

Dean Shaklee, RTD’s chief maintenance supervisor, said the agency also did such things as purchasing parts directly from manufacturers to avoid middle-man markups,

“Instead of buying parts from bus manufacturers or distributors who usually tag on hefty handling fees and profits, we looked for cheaper supply sources such as direct buy from manufacturers,” he said. “For example, we bought LED interior lights directly from the manufacturer. We found a gear box manufacturer who could duplicate the functionality of the bus rear-wheel drive system and manufactured the gear boxes for us at a much less cost.”

The buses, acquired starting in 2000, are hybrid vehicles that are moved by electric motors powered by batteries that are constantly recharged by a small on-board compressed natural gas engine. RTD had them custom-built to replace the mall’s original fleet of smaller diesel-powered shuttles. Planned to last 12 years, the refurbishing will add at least two years of life to them while RTD looks over bids for replacement vehicles.

As part of the FasTracks program and the planned extension of the mall down to the Millennium Bridge where the new light rail station is to be built, RTD needs more buses to maintain the same service level with the added distance. Over the summer, it put out a bid for two new vehicles with an option for 57 more if the new ones work out.

In September, bids were taken from Proterra LLC, Cobus Industries and DesignLine USA. RTD is currently evaluating the proposals.

Here are some of the statistics on how much use RTD gets out of these vehicles:

• The shuttles make a total of 1,212 one-way trips each weekday between Union Station and Civic Center. In one week, the fleet travels a total of 7,448 miles just on 16th Street.
• More than 300 million passengers have ridden the shuttles since the 16th Street Mall began operation in 1982.
• A mall shuttle leaves each terminal every 75 seconds during peak periods.