Bangor News
1/22/2016 - City of Bangor, Community Connector Welcomes Home Bus 1046 after a Midlife Overhaul at Maine Military Authority (MMA) in Limestone, ME.
Bangor, Maine - The City of Bangor, Community Connector public transit service is excited to announce the Home Coming of Bus 1046 after a Midlife Overhaul at MMA in Limestone. The State of Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) has recognized that many transit buses throughout the state are in need of repair or replacement, but funding was not available to purchase all new buses. As a result, in early 2015, MDOT decided to consider utilizing the new midlife overhaul program MMA had introduced in 2014, and began to search for a transit system that had a bus that would qualify for a midlife overhaul. The City of Bangor, Community Connector had the only bus in the State that fit the midlife overhaul requirements of either half of the useful bus life in years or 250,000 miles. MDOT offered the funding for the overhaul and City of Bangor accepted the offer. The bus left Bangor and was delivered to MMA in the fall of 2015 and is returning this week in "just like new" conditio n. The cost for the overhaul work was approximately $100,000, while a similar new replacement bus would cost in excess of $400,000 This is a 2011 Gillig Bus and it was purchased with funds from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The bus has a 12 year useful life span. This midlife overhaul will extend the useful life span another 5 to7 years.
The unveiling will be at noon on Friday, January 22, at the Fleet Maintenance/Community Connector Bus Storage Building, 481 Maine Ave., Bangor, Maine. There will be a short program with a variety of speakers representing agencies involved with this overhaul process. Please join us for this presentation and celebrate our first transit bus midlife overhaul that will help extend the life of our fleet. You will have an opportunity to view the bus and talk with the people directly involved. This program has been approved by both the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT).