JACKSON, Wyo. — Eleven new START Buses are out and about in the Jackson Hole valley to service riders to and fro.
“[The new fleet was] placed into service a week or two ago,” said START Transit Operations Director Bruce Abel.
Out of the 11 new buses, four are 30 feet long, which service the town routes, and seven are 40 feet long, which is the more traditional transit bus size, and service commuter routes to Teton Village and other areas.
Abel added that all buses in the new fleet run on diesel gas. These new buses will replace the START vehicles that have reached the end of their lifespan.
“They are replacing vehicles that range in age from 12 years old to 21 years old and range in mileage from just over 500,000 to 1.5 million miles,” said Abel.
To put that into perspective, Abel says the federal guidelines say a useful life of a bus is 12 years and 500,000 miles. In other words, the START bus fleet that is being replaced was utilized beyond its expected capacity.
Funding for this new START Bus fleet came from both the federal government and local money from the town and county.
“The way that the federal grants work, the feds pay about 80 percent of the price of the vehicle and then local sources, in this case, the town and county, pay 20 percent of the cost,” Abel said.
START Bus has a fleet of 30 buses. While they currently possess 41 buses they plan to dispose of 11 from the old fleet.
On June 26, START will ask the Town Council for its authorization to dispose of the buses that have just been replaced.
