All aboard, Yellowknife — it’s a new day for the city’s public transit fleet.
Comprised of eight new buses, the new stock is hitting the road.
Though they keep some spares, too. According to the city, there are three extra vehicles just in case.
“If a bus is in the shop for maintenance, we do have that backup,” said Mayor Rebecca Alty, who was on hand for the unveiling of the new vehicles outside the Fieldhouse on Tuesday morning.
The inside of the new buses feature more open space at the front. Drivers now also have a door to keep themselves warmer during the winter and shields them from any potential altercation with a passenger.
There’s the addition of a wheelchair push button, which allows for the bus to lower and provide a ramp at the front for passengers who need some extra time leaving the bus.
“That will identify to the driver that it is a wheelchair request for the stop,” said Eric Moore, a maintenance manger with Transdev, the company that helped design these buses. “The driver should then know to deploy the ramp and accommodate the passenger’s request.”
There are more features to come in each of the new buses, including an automatic stop announcement from each bus and a new type of fare box that allows passengers to pay with a card rather than cash.
“That can be added down the road,” Moore said. “As far as a monthly pass or a 10-use pass, that hardware is on the way and will be installed in the coming weeks.”
There’s also a passenger count feature that will be added for each bus.
“There’ll be an app people can download so you’ll be able to see how much the bus is at capacity,” said Alty.
One of the reasons for the count is to help passengers decide if they want to get on a bus that seems crowded, she added.
As for the use of magnetic swipe cards for bus passes, it’s still not certain when those will arrive either.
The last fleet of vehicles faced years of wear and tear in what the city described as an unprecedented number of mechanical issues over the past handful of months.
Yellowknife Accessible Transit Service (YATS) will also be getting a new fleet later this year — they also come with a wheelchair lift and all-wheel drive, but there’s no date on when the reveal for those vehicles will be.