CATS buys half dozen used buses for just under $45K at auction

In an effort to improve system reliability at a modest expense, the Capital Area Transit System bought six, 13-year-old buses at auction from the transit system in Roanoke, Va., earlier this month. The buses cost a total of $44,900, with individual buses ranging in price from $7,000 to $9,600. All the buses have nearly 350,000 miles on them.
The purchase comes as en route breakdowns have ballooned from just under 60 in January and February, before a system expansion in March, to 203 breakdowns in August. CATS did not respond by this morning’s deadline to requests for further details on how many buses have been added to the fleet since the March expansion.
Assistant Secretary to the CATS Board of Commissioners Amie McNaylor says the buses bought at auction will go toward replacing 17-year-old buses with 750,000 miles on them.
“The expectation is that they will be more reliable when compared to our current fleet,” McNaylor says in an email to Daily Report.
New buses cost around $450,000 each, McNaylor says, adding refurbished buses cost between $175,000 and $200,000 each. No federal grant money is available to buy new buses, she says, and if federal grants are used to buy refurbished buses, the system must commit to keeping them on the road for at least seven years. The system did not need to use grants for this purchase.
“This gives us the flexibility to decide when not to use the buses anymore for a very small cost of acquisition,” McNaylor said.
McNaylor could not specify when CATS expects the buses to be in use, saying only that they will be “staggered into service as they arrive and are outfitted with equipment.”
According to a presentation CATS CEO Bob Mirabito gave to a CATS committee meeting in September, it will cost the system an additional $17,000 per bus to paint and outfit them with CATS equipment. The buses are being shipped to Baton Rouge at a cost of $3,500 per bus, McNaylor says.