Evaluación de Cargas.

The vehicle fleet and operations facility are capital items that control the expansion of service. With- out enough vehicles or the space to store and main- tain them, many of the elements of this plan cannot be implemented.

Vehicle Fleet

Chapel Hill Transit's vehicle fleet must expand to keep pace with increasing service hours and ex- panding ridership. A primary concern of this plan is to ensure that the agency has enough buses to op- erate its service efficiently and reliably.

The standard Chapel Hill Transit vehicle is a 35- foot diesel-powered bus. As of Fall 2005, Chapel Hill Transit owned 83 of these vehicles. The agency also had three smaller mini-buses, which can allow greater flexibility in providing neighborhood transit services. Table 3.2 provides more details on the bus fleet. Chapel Hill Transit also operated 12 lift- equipped vans for EZ Rider services, five vans and minivans for Shared Ride Feeder Service, three maintenance trucks, and 12 supervisory and sup- port vehicles (see Table 3.2).

Chapel Hill Transit replaces buses after 12 years of service, at which point federal funding becomes available for replacement buses. Any additional years of service from a bus will probably reduce long-term capital expenditures, although resale value of the buses will decrease and maintenance costs may increase. Unlike buying a new car, the process of ordering and purchasing a new bus re- quires approximately two years. For this reason, it is important to predict future expansion needs and begin the process early.

Fixed Route Services

35' transit bus 1988 Twin Coach 3 N/A

35' transit bus 1990 TMC RTS 13 Refurbished 2005-2006

35' transit bus 1995 Gillig Phantom 20 2007

35' transit bus 1996 Gillig Phantom 8 2008

35' transit bus 1998 Nova RTS 12 2010

25' mini-bus 2000 Champion Defender 3 2007

35' transit bus 2001 Volvo Nova 17 2013

35' transit bus 2002 Volvo Nova 10 2014

EZ Rider

Lift-equipped van 1996 Dodge 1 Spare*

Lift-equipped van 1998 Dodge 1 Spare

Lift-equipped van 2000 Dodge 5 2004*

Lift-equipped van 2003 Dodge 3 2007

Lift-equipped van 2005 Dodge Sprinter 3 2009

* Six lift-equipped vans are on order to replace the 1996 and 2000 Dodge vans. Shared Ride Feeder Service

15-passenger van 2002 Dodge 1 2006

Minivan 2003 Dodge Caravan 1 2007

Minivan 2004 Dodge Caravan 2 2008

Minivan 2006 Dodge Caravan 1 2010

Maintenance

Pickup truck 1994 Ford F-250 1 To be replaced

Pickup truck 1997 Ford 1 2001

Pickup truck 2005 Dodge 1 2009

15-passenger van 1997 Dodge 1 Retained for expansion

Station wagon 1999 Ford Taurus 2 Retained for expansion

Sport utility vehicle 1999 Ford Explorer 1 2003

Station wagon 2000 Ford Taurus 3 2004

Station wagon 2000 Oldsmobile 1 2004

Sport utility vehicle 2003 Dodge Durango 1 2007

Minivan 2003 Dodge Caravan 1 2007

Sport utility vehicle 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid 2 2010

Over the five-year planning period, Chapel Hill Transit anticipates being able to expand its bus fleet by 28 buses. The three Champion Defender mini- buses (see Table 3.2) will reach the end of their seven-year service life in FY 2007-08. Three new full-size buses will replace them, leaving the total number of buses unchanged. FY 2007-08 will also see 20 Gilligs reach their 12-year replacement point; eight more will do so the next year. Federal funds will then cover the purchase of 28 new replacement buses. The Gilligs have been reasonably reliable and will be suitable for refurbishing, so a fleet ex- pansion will be achieved by extending the lives of these 28 buses. However, this will not occur until FY 2007-08 at the earliest. Until that point, there is likely to be a significant gap between the number of buses in the fleet and the number of buses neces- sary to operate all the recommended services (see Chapter 5).

Additional buses will be needed to handle increased demand and crowding on current routes, to provide service on new routes, and to reduce peak-hour

headways. Table 3.3 estimates these needs. The number of buses required for service can be calcu- lated given the headway, route mileage and average speed. Route mileage for new and modified routes can be estimated, and average speed can be as- sumed based on past experience and estimations of future traffic flow. This approach is used in Chap- ter 5 to arrive at cost estimates.

When purchasing new vehicles, Chapel Hill Transit should consider buying some larger vehicles than it currently operates. The standard vehicle could be- come a 40-foot bus, which is slightly larger than what is used currently. Articulated buses, often 60 feet long with a joint in the middle to ease turning, could help alleviate some capacity problems. How- ever, they should only be used on routes where overcrowding is experienced at five- to ten-minute frequencies, such as the FCX Route. Operating a huge bus once every 30 minutes is not the ideal way to accommodate passengers; instead, standard buses should run more and more frequently until headways are under 10 minutes, at which point lar-

ger vehicles should be considered. If the service area of fixed routes steadily increases over the next several years, as this plan proposes, the area served by Shared Ride Feeder Zones will diminish. The number of vehicles needed for this service will likewise decrease, along with associated main- tenance expenditures.

However, ridership of the EZ Rider van service will probably continue to increase. Chapel Hill’s population will incorporate more college students during the planning period, but the Town will also continue to be a place for retirees to settle. Over time, this aging segment of the population is Table 3.3: Fleet availability for new peak-hour service, based on

priority levels in Chapter 5. Fiscal

Year Fleet Size

Peak Buses

Needed (15% ratio) Spares Available Buses

2005-06 86 56 13 17 2006-07 86 71 13 2 2007-08 109 98 17 -6 2008-09 117 18 1 2009-10 117 125 18 -26 2010-11 129 20 -16

Notes: The fleet size includes 23 expansion buses that could arrive in 2007, eight more in 2008, and 12 more in 2010. Priority levels are defined in Chapter 5. Peak usage is for fixed routes only, excluding trippers and special-event services. As of spring 2006, as many as 8 additional peak buses operated as trippers. Available buses could be used for trippers or special-event services.

Priority Level (Current) Tier One Tier Two Tier Three

Anniversary Committee.

As the size of the passenger fleet grows, so must the number of service and administrative cars, vans and trucks. In addition to their use in the Shared Ride program, station wagons transport relief drivers to meet buses and bring drivers back to the operations facility after their shifts. Since more routes and buses will be on the road, more drivers and cars will be needed to replace those drivers when their shifts are done.

Trucks owned by Chapel Hill Transit are used for maintenance in the field. Again, if the bus fleet expands, the number of service trucks might need to be increased. A doubling of the bus fleet requires the addition of at least one truck in order to ensure that disabled buses can be serviced at all times. Maintenance Facility and Equipment

Since 1977, Chapel Hill Transit’s operations and maintenance facilities have been located on the University’s Horace Williams tract off what is now MLK Jr. Blvd. Because the lease expires on Decem- ber 31, 2006 and will not be renewed, this 21,000- square-foot operations and maintenance facility must be vacated by the end of 2006. A new Town Operations Center on Millhouse Rd. in the north- west corner of Chapel Hill will house these func- tions along with other Town departments and is scheduled to be completed by that time.

Relocation will affect Chapel Hill Transit in various ways. First, additional deadheading time and mile- age will be added to most routes as buses travel between the operations facility and the endpoints of routes. On average, a bus could be expected to leave five minutes earlier than current departure times. This will not significantly impact service, but

The second effect of relocation will have much more bearing on the services that Chapel Hill Tran- sit is able to provide. At $43 million, designing and constructing the new facility is the single largest capital project in the Town’s history; the price tag of the transit portion alone is over $22 million. Ac- cording to Chapel Hill’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for FY 2003-04, approximately $25 million of the total cost is not covered by grants. This construction might come at the ex- pense of other capital, such as adding more buses or improving passenger facilities.

This chapter expresses some of the financial as- pects of Chapel Hill Transit. The first section de- scribes the agency’s funding sources and revenue. The second section looks at expenditures, and the chapter concludes with a look at some elements of the FY 2006-07 budget.