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Edmcowboy11 said:
Now that I've been working downtown on a regular basis I definitely take the tram into the downtown core as much as possible. Right now because of the design of the stations we don't officially have a free Fair Zone but we essentially have a free Fair Zone. Why do I say that, is because I'm pretty certain that all the street people that's are hanging out at the stations inside the shelters and those that are hopping on the trains are not paying customers at all. I again would rather see the pass Gates reinstalled at all LRT stations and if they want something for LRT customers they could easily add a minimal fee while in the downtown core.
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Well, this is the problem with our city's dithering. We don't enforce payment much, nor do we make it free, so we are in sort of purgatory here.

I suppose if you look homeless, needy enough or you are the type that ignores the rules you can likely ride for free. However, the City and ETS needs to ask itself are these the users we really want to attract more of?
 
I think Vancouver’s fares work because of Burnaby being adjacent to Vancouver, and New Westminster and Surrey being across the Fraser River.
 
Foolworm said:
Vancouver's fares work because the zone system only applies to the trains and ferry -- buses have a flat rate.
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But lets not forgot that Translink buses are only 1 zone because of problems experienced back in 2015 when rolling out the Compass system, including getting passengers to tap off of buses, tapping off slowing down passenger flow, slow card readers, and the ability to cheat by tapping out at the rear readers on the bus while you're still in the first zone of a multi zone trip.
 
trevorhayden said:
We wouldn't have such a fast, aging bus fleet if we had an extensive rail-based network.
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Says who?
Edmonton has seen under investment in replacement vehicles. Who's to say that there wouldn't be under investment in replacing rail vehicles? Regardless of how extensive a rail network, there would still be a rapidly aging bus fleet when the City only budgets enough money to replace 11 buses one year, 6 buses the next, and 5 buses year after.
 
Edmonton wouldn't be in this position if Proterra and Vicinity hadn't gone belly-up -- just insane bad luck picking bus manufacturers.
 
Foolworm said:
Edmonton wouldn't be in this position if Proterra and Vicinity hadn't gone belly-up -- just insane bad luck picking bus manufacturers.
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Proterra is one thing, but, Vicinity? ETS doesn't have any problem deploying their Vicinity's. They even managed to get an accident victim back on the road earlier this year. It's not like VMC even produced parts. It was all contract manufacturing in China initially, but was I believe towards the end they were looking towards Turkey. Right now ETS deploys at peak about 25 Vicinity's out of a fleet of 49, and that's largely because ETS doesn't have routes to run them on. In some cases like the 502 the routes became too popular and 40' buses were needed.
And this isn't new. There was a large change in community bus deployments back in mid-late 2010's that saw a lot less being deployed. I want to say it was when Eddie Robar arrived? Might have even been before that. When ETS purchased the Vicinity's it was initially 15. They used those to get rid of the Glaval's in particular. There was PTIF funding available, so ETS went and and used to that to just replace the rest of the entire community bus fleet on a 1 for 1 basis, even if it wasn't really needed based upon the deployments at the time. The Passport-HD's were only 6 years old out of a 10 year life span when they were retired by the Vicinity's. The BNR didn't help with community bus deployment, and it's been reduced even lower since.
So no, while Proterra and Vicinity's both don't exist, Vicinity's demise isn't handicapping the 40' bus fleet.

And while I'm not necessarily going to defend Proterra, if you look at transit agencies operating electric bus fleets, a lot of the buses built when Edmonton's were are out of service now. TTC's entire fleet of 60 buses from that era is parked, although, it would have been a challenge for the TTC to operate 3 small fleets of electric buses, when they had 2 large fleets coming in of modern electric buses.
While I strongly suspect if ETS had a 60 strong New Flyer electric bus fleet instead of Proterra's they would probably have more than about 25 in service, I also don't think they'd be too thrilled with them either and they would all but certainly be limited to peak hours only, and instead of complaining "Why Proterra?" we'd be complaining "why electric?".
It's worth noting a few things about the Proterra's.
The second batch from 2022 are actually doing pretty good. 15/20 have seen service in 2026. The 2020 series has seen 15/40 in service in 2026.
ETS just returned 8036 to service that had been off the road since 2023. So, it could be that in time they could well increase deployment. There is a company called Fleet E Force working on supplying parts for Proterra buses.
 
Well yes, Vicinity's demise isn't handicapping the 40' fleet -- it's handicapping the 30' fleet. They all need to be replaced because finding parts for a midlife refurbishment is impossible.

As for Proterra, all I can say is Edmonton picked the wrong horse in the electrification race. As an advocate of battery electrics, it's extremely frustrating because people point to it whenever zero emission vehicles are discussed.
 
Foolworm said:
Well yes, Vicinity's demise isn't handicapping the 40' fleet -- it's handicapping the 30' fleet. They all need to be replaced because finding parts for a midlife refurbishment is impossible.

As for Proterra, all I can say is Edmonton picked the wrong horse in the electrification race. As an advocate of battery electrics, it's extremely frustrating because people point to it whenever zero emission vehicles are discussed.
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Back in March 2024 fleet renewal came up. The plan was to replace all Vicinity's in one shot in 2029, this predated Vicinity's bankruptcy in August of 2024. 2026 and the plan is still to replace the Vicinity's in 2029, but now they mention parts are tougher to get. Typically transit agencies haven't rebuilt buses like the Vicinity anyways, so, I don't think there was ever a plan to rebuild the Vicinity's in the first place. More on that below, if interested.

Edmonton Transit Service Conventional Bus Renewal Needs - Urban Planning Committee - May 12, 2026

pub-edmonton.escribemeetings.com pub-edmonton.escribemeetings.com

Yes, Edmonton certainly did pick the wrong horse with Proterra. However, I feel it was a solid choice from my perspective, and met what ETS speced. Maybe ETS went overboard specing the fleet, but, they wanted buses with the largest battery capacity, and depot charging. Specifically they wanted charging via pantograph in the depot so that no labour was needed to physically plug and unplug buses. And not "no labour" from a money saving perspective, but from a safety perspective... no cables hanging from roof, no tripping hazards, injury potential from plugging and unplugging buses. This eliminated BYD, plus other reasons, despite BYD being able to supply a bus built from the ground up as an electric bus. This differs from New Flyer who took a diesel bus and turned it into a electric bus. Proterra had an electric bus designed from the ground up using composite materials, which provided weight savings which could go into larger battery systems. That difference was huge. In 2020 when New Flyer was offering a 466 kWh battery pack with a 255 mile range while ETS's Proterra's have a 660 kWh battery pack with a 350 mile range. Now, of course we all know the mileage ranges are advertising BS. But, at the time Proterra was seemingly the best choice, despite not being a known product in Canada. I wouldn't be surprised if that when they were scoring New Flyer and Proterra during the selection phase, New Flyer probably beat Proterra in a lot of the scoring, but when it came down to raw battery size and range those probably accounted for more points than New Flyer could offset by winning other components of the scoring. I believe the longest run I saw a Proterra do was 17+ hours, and 14-15 hours wasn't uncommon.
Today, New Flyer has caught up to where Proterra was and they offer a 660 kWh battery pack. Interestingly with only a 320 mile range, so it could have been that Proterra's use of composites for their electric bus still would have given them an edge in range over a New Flyer bus with the same size battery pack. NovaBus is still behind offering a 564 kWh battery pack.
Calgary Transit has 120 NovaBus's on order, and it seems they are aiming low for their deployment. They apparently only plan to use their electric buses on peak hour runs, or otherwise shorter runs (I'm guessing 5-7 hours).

Back to the Vicinity's...
First of all, FTBCI still lists them http://www.ftbcibus.com/goods/show-113.aspx
Not sure if they would actually build a fleet for someone or not. I would imagine just a single Canadian transit agency wanting to purchase some would probably have to deal with the importing them from China which isn't something cities typically deal with.
Secondly, with VMC's demise a few people formerly of VMC started a new company called Raeda Dynamics. What I've heard is that they had ownership of some of the VMC IP. They certainly also would have had the connections and knowledge for importing from China. I want to say at one point there was even an ETS logo on their website under their partners. I know for sure Oakville Transit was listed as a partner but is now gone. I'm not sure who their contract manufacture is, but they have 1 bus delivered so far with apparently more on order. Although their bus is known as the Medius, it's clearly is an evolution of the Vicinity. Presumably they could supply parts for Vicinity's and have experience importing it.

Third, ETS performs 2 different refurbs. One is a mechanical. Vicinity's use standard Cummins engines and ZF transmissions so really that shouldn't suffer from parts issues. The second type of refurb is body. Redoing the flooring would be fine. Things could get interesting though if replacement body panels are needed. That could be where ETS runs into problems. Even if VMC still existed, if part of the refurb required replacing all of the lower skirt panels VMC would have to special order all of that in because they wouldn't have anywhere near enough stock on hand, or ETS comes up with a local solution.

Forth, ETS has a tender out right now for Vicinity parts. So, it might even be premature for ETS to say parts are an issue until they actually get some responses back and truly gauge what the market can offer, either OEM or aftermarket.

Finally, my comment that transit agencies just typically don't rebuild buses like the Vicinity.
The Vicinity is a bit of an interesting beast. When we talk about bus lifecycles, 12 years often comes up for 40' and 60' buses. This is based upon US guidelines and how they fund buses, so, buses are typically built to last 12 years. Canada doesn't have the federal funding for bus replacements, so we tend to keep our buses running longer. The US has testing generically known as "Altoona testing" to ensure bus designs meet durability expectations to meet those service lives, as well as a for fuel economy, emissions etc.
Cutaway buses are 5 years, medium duty buses 10 years, and heavy duty buses 12 years.
Most medium duty low floor buses have the basic appearance of larger 40' buses. Buses such as the E-Z Rider II, and Arboc Sprit of Equess are tested as 10 year buses. The Vicinity looks like it should fit into the 10 year category, but, it is tested as a 12 year bus which does make it a bit of an outlier. Typically, I don't think anyone rebuilds medium duty buses. Sometimes particular bus designs are just not economically feasible to refurb. Is the Vicinity eone of those? I cannot say, but, I don't think ETS really intended to refurb the Vicinity's in the first place.
Having said that, ETS has worked some miracles in the past. Keeping ELF's running for so long because the Glaval Easy On's were far below expectation, and then even getting those Easy On's to 10 years was no small feat. The history behind ETS's community bus fleet is actually quite fascinating.

The scary thing is the cost of replacement 30' buses. Budgeted at $800K each when 40' buses are $1 million each. I want to say the Vicinity's were around $300-400K and 40' buses at the time were probably around $750K. With the limited use of the Vicinity's, ETS could probably go for a fleet of 30-35 30' buses and buy 40' buses from the left over amount.
 
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I recall BC Transit had plans for their Vicinities. They were responsible for the company's rise in the first place, since they wanted a local player that could fill that niche. It was a big blow for them when Vicinity went under and they still are duking it out in the courts, like Edmonton with Proterra.

The company also had plans to get into the battery vehicle market and had built a factory in the US. It just goes to show how volatile the space is, when 2024 started they were firing on all cylinders and by end of year they were out of business.

It just doesn't look good when the City picks companies that go belly-up, and they've done it twice now.
 
Vicinity did well through the 2010's. Their problem on the bus side was that Canada doesn't have enough demand to keep a niche builder going with a sustainable number of orders. Their 49 bus order from Edmonton over 2 years was great, and I believe their largest outside of BC, but, now Edmonton doesn't need to buy again for 12 years. Calgary tried them and didn't like them, and generally speaking it seemed like most transit agencies that wanted them had them by 2024. BC Transit's last order was 2022 and didn't buy any after. The one exception was Quebec. Quebec seemed to be where most of their new buses were heading by the early-mid 2020's, and probably why Radea Dynamics, while originally located in Surrey, BC moved to Quebec.
The Vicinity's advantage was a competitive price because it was built in China. That prevented it from meeting transit bus related Buy America requirements. VMC did have some success selling to companies like airlines/ airports and car rental companies who were private operations which didn't receive federal money for bus purchases but that was as far as they really got in the US.
The operation in Ferndale, WA was far from a factory. It was for final assembly and upfitting of electric trucks, and wasn't much more than a shell of a building and a roof mounted crane. The electric trucks themselves where made in China. What might have been what really hurt VMC's electric truck business was when the US and later Canada brought in the 100% tariff on all Chinese EV's in 2024.

As a friend of mine said as we were discussing VMC after going through their assets that were being sold off: "The trucks were nothing special, just imported from China, and frankly a poorly researched venture. The market for that type of truck are a bunch of small companies that probably prefer using Fords, Honda's, Hinos and what not and prefer they can take to the mehanic they've always known."
 
The Ferndale factory never really got going before they folded, but to say it's hardly one is playing semantics.

The simple fact of the matter is that Vicinity went under, and they supplied Edmonton's entire 30' fleet. Fortunately for the City it didn't end up becoming a big issue like with Proterra, but refurbishment is off the table and adds to the replacement burden.
 
Foolworm said:
The Ferndale factory never really got going before they folded, but to say it's hardly one is playing semantics.

The simple fact of the matter is that Vicinity went under, and they supplied Edmonton's entire 30' fleet. Fortunately for the City it didn't end up becoming a big issue like with Proterra, but refurbishment is off the table and adds to the replacement burden.
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But then I contend that the intention was always to replace the 30' fleet at 12 years, with the 2029 replacement date preceding Vicinity going under. Therefore, no burden.
 
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