New trolleys carry big price tag

New dual-mode electric trolley buses being tested by the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority could replace problem-plagued trolleys that were defective from the start and never lived up to expectations.

But the replacements won’t be cheap. If a decision is made to replace the system’s 57 electric trolleys with any of the buses undergoing testing, it would mark the largest capital expenditure in RTA history, said Mark Donaghy, RTA executive director.

Three $1.4 million prototype buses are getting tested, with a fourth to arrive this month. The buses will begin taking paying customers on Monday, according Donaghy.

Donaghy, who drove one of the prototypes during a six-week testing period, said passengers will notice a much smoother ride. No decision will be made on future purchases until a year of road tests to see how they compare to the existing fleet of electric trolley, diesel and hybrid-diesel buses, he said.

But, said Donaghy, “I’m very confident that if nothing else, we’ve found a good replacement for our trolleys.”

The poor performance of the fleet of 57 trolleys that arrived in 1998 and 1999 helped renew a debate over whether Dayton should continue using electric trolley buses. Dayton is one of just five transit systems in the U.S. and one in Vancouver to use electric trolley buses. The others are in San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston.

Trolley buses are far more expensive than diesel buses but are generally less expensive to operate and have a longer life, Donaghy said. They also offer environmental advantages. A regular diesel bus costs about $440,000 and the hybrid diesel costs $600,000. Diesel buses have a life of about 12 years or 500,000 miles, which RTA typically passes in about nine years.

The new trolleys’ have an 18- to 20-year lifespan, Donaghy said.

‘Green’ movement

The prototypes, Donaghy said, will continue RTA’s push to become more “green,” an effort that includes the 2010 roll out of buses powered by a clean diesel hybrid electrical propulsion system and paid for mostly by federal stimulus funds.

Public transit systems are leading the way in alternative energy transportation, said Virginia Miller, director of media relations for the American Public Transportation Association. Compressed or liquefied natural gas and bio-diesel are the most common alternative fuels for public transit, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dayton’s new trolleys — dubbed NexGen — offer multiple technological improvements over the existing trolley fleet, including better, longer-lasting batteries and the ability to disengage from the electric trolley wire with a push button inside the vehicle rather than the driver having to get out and do it by hand.

The old trolleys were supposed to allow the bus to drive on battery power at three miles per hour for a very short period of time, to get around accidents or other roadway blockages. But even that ability has proven to be intermittent, Donaghy said.

Credit: Lisa Powell

The new batteries “can operate at normal speeds with a full load of passengers” for about 20 miles, said Donaghy.

And unlike the old trolleys, which were manufactured by the now defunct Electric Transit Inc. (ETI), the new buses use a proven bus body — manufactured and modified for electric trolley lines by California-based Gillig — that is essentially the same body used in RTA’s diesel fleet.

Donaghy said the new trolleys operate using alternating current rather than the old trolleys’ direct current, which he said was “old technology” even when the ETI trolleys were purchased by RTA in the 1990s. AC drive electric trolleys in Boston get more than 10 times the miles between mechanical failures as RTA’s old trolleys and five times that of existing diesel buses, said Donaghy.

“We are hoping one of the enhancements is we’ll see fewer mechanical issues,” he said.

No obligation

Dayton’s status among the nation’s few trolley cities carries a hefty price tag, at least up front.

If the year-long testing shows the vehicles to be reliable, RTA has the option to buy up to 75 more at a cost of about $1.03 million each from a consortium of three companies that was the only bidder. The prototypes are the first of their kind and so were more expensive than the production vehicles would be, Donaghy said.

The publicly-funded transit system has no obligation to buy any buses beyond the four prototypes, which will remain in the 279-vehicle fleet, Donaghy said.

The bid for the four prototypes was awarded in 2013 and the $5.7 million contract was signed in June, with 80 percent of the cost covered by federal dollars and 20 percent from local reserves. The prime contractor is a German firm, Vossloh Kiepe Inc., which handles all the electrification. Gillig manufactures the bus and Complete Coach Works — also of California — installs the electrification equipment manufactured by Vossloh.

Two of the prototypes being tested are all-electric, while the other two have a small diesel engine that feeds a generator to power the trolley.

Depending on which option it chooses, RTA could spend as much as $91.2 million on the replacements, though that would depend on how many vehicles are purchased and how long it takes to buy them.

RTA is also considering a comprehensive upgrade of the components of its trolley infrastructure, parts of which are more than 100 years old.

RTA for years has been setting aside money in its capital budget to pay for replacement trolleys. Capital expenditures are funded through a combination of federal dollars and local sources, typically through an 80/20 percent split. The local 20 percent match could come out of fare revenue and the authority’s 0.5 percent sales tax. Donaghy said the authority would also seek grant money.

RTA Board of Trustees President Franz Hoge said he is confident the transit system will be able to afford new trolley buses.

‘Catastrophic’ failure

RTA’s last big trolley purchase proved disastrous.

The ETI trolleys were supposed to last 18 years but were problem-plagued from the beginning, with higher-than-expected maintenance costs and more time spent out of service. The three ETI prototypes have been inoperable for years and only about 45 of the remaining 54 trolleys are in service, Donaghy said.

Those trolleys cost about $550,000 each when they were purchased in 1994 from ETI, a consortium of Maryland-based defense contractor AAI Corp. and SKODA in the Czech Republic.

Credit: Lisa Powell

The trolleys began arriving in 1998 and 1999. Prototypes were tested but were not wide enough for wheelchairs and the bus was redesigned. There was no prototype or much testing of that redesigned bus, which soon presented electrical and teering problems.

An inspection showed cracked or broken suspension brackets on 40 buses and cracked rear main frames on 13 — a defect that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said could cause the rear section of the bus to ”catastrophically fail.”

Later, after transit officials in San Francisco — ETI’s only other trolley customer — found axle weld cracks on vehicles in its fleet, an inspection found the same problem on 17 of the RTA trolleys.

In all, only seven of the ETI trolleys in Dayton showed no defects. ETI fixed the problems under warranty, but Donaghy said the vehicles have under-performed throughout their lifetime. The company dissolved in 2004, although AAI still exists and can supply some parts. Others replacement parts are found with alternate suppliers or by RTA technicians rebuilding the defective parts.

Donaghy said the authority’s technicians will have to nurse the buses “to the end of their useful lives.”

“Our goal would be to get the ETIs off the street as fast as we can,” he said.

How to ride NexGen electric trolley buses:

- Rollout is Monday at 12:38 p.m. for Route 8 at Wright Stop Plaza in downtown Dayton.

- Buses will initially operate on Routes 4, 7 and 8.

- Will later expand to other routes to test off-wire capability.

U.S.public transit systems using electric trolley buses

San Francisco

King County (Seattle)

Southeastern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)

Massachusetts Bay (Boston)

Greater Dayton RTA