Restart of the circulator service in downtown Baltimore to start in July.
Here's a photo of the buses that will run the service. Look familiar?
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/airguam1/2009-06-10_11-16-49.jpg
They sure do. Wonder where they got em from because the Buy America Act precludes the purchase of these guys with Fed Funds. Dc got around it with the first batch by buying from ACTransit.
I think with the Buy America act, 80% or so of the materials and components have to be assembled in the U.S. Someone can help me out on this to fill in the rest of the details.
Well see how long it remains free.
The builder is Design Line, originally of New Zealand but now based in Charlotte. Here's their press release:
http://www.designlineinternational.com/news.cfm?story=34557
Baltimore's big challenge will not only be ridership (IMO the numbers are optimistic at best) but will the buses survive Balto's notoriously rough streets. The SLF's got destroyed (Both MTA's & DASH, the previous downtown shuttles) in short order and the MTA's 3 Optima's aren't faring much better. Low floors and short wheelbases do not mix well here.
Mayor Dixon believes the Charm City Circulator can be as successful as the DC Circulator attracting downtown parkers and tourists alike. The previous DASH operation, funded by state and federal grants, ran empty almost all the time with one route being cancelled within a few months. As usual in Balto. advertising and promotion were afterthoughts with most folks clueless about the DASH service. Plus it was focused exclusively on office workers, encouraging them to park at outlying garages and parking lots instead of using the closer garages where many of them parked free or with a discount from their job.
The service was to begin in July but Design Line is reportedly having assembly line issues (lack of parts) that will delay start-up to September at the earliest. What type of and how much promotion and advertising is being planned is unknown but to date there have only been 3 very short newspaper articles on the service, including one that was only five sentences.