New Flyer Industries Inc. announced Oct. 24 that Regional Transportation District (RTD) in Denver has awarded New Flyer a five year contract to build up to 192 diesel 60-foot Xcelsior heavy-duty transit buses.
This is the first time the company will build buses for RTD. The contract, which contains a firm order for 52 buses using New Flyer's Xcelsior platform, of which 12 of these buses will be built using New Flyer's bus rapid transit (BRT) styling. The contract also contains up to 140 options that may be awarded at a later date with the option to build buses of diesel-hybrid, CNG or clean diesel propulsion.
RTD has an active transit bus fleet of 572 buses with an average bus fleet age of over 10 years. The addition of these 52 Xcelsior buses will help RTD serve their 2.8 million service area population encompassed in the 40 municipalities, 6 counties and 2 city/county jurisdictions. The BRT style buses will be used to implement the new "metroRide service", RTD's new free downtown circulator being implemented to correspond to the opening of Denver Union Station as the new multimodel transportation hub in downtown Denver.
"We look forward to a highly productive working relationship with New Flyer that benefits our passengers, bus operators and maintenance teams. Adding New Flyer to our bus fleet helps us embark on another exciting chapter in RTD's long history of providing the best possible vehicles and service to our customers," said Bruce Abel, RTD assistant general manager of bus operations.
"We're privileged to be awarded this contract by RTD," said Paul Soubry, New Flyer's president and CEO. "We are excited to not only have RTD as a new customer, but thrilled that we can produce our Xcelsior model in both the 60-foot and 60-foot BRT styling."
Production of the 12 60-foot BRT-styled buses is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2014 with all buses being delivered by the second quarter 2014. The 52 60-foot Xcelsior buses will be manufactured beginning in the first quarter of 2014 and will all be completely manufactured and assembled at New Flyer of America's St. Cloud, Minn. manufacturing facility.
