Phoenix residents will soon see more buses rolling on city streets
Apr 6, 2018, 5:01 AM | Updated: Apr 9, 2018, 5:33 am
(Facebook/Valley Metro)
(Facebook/Valley Metro)
PHOENIX — Phoenix will soon get millions of dollars in federal grant money to replace aging buses.
Phoenix transit will get a total of $2.6 million.
The money comes from the U.S. Transportation Department and Federal Transit Administration.
“With the required local match of 15 percent, this will leverage local funds and allow us to buy approximately six new buses,” said Ken Kessler, the city’s acting public transit director.
Kessler said the city should see the grant money in a couple of months.
“A month and a half to probably two and a half months to go through the online system of actually getting the funds obligated and placement available for us to draw down to spend,” he said.
The Phoenix transit fleet is seeing longer operating hours and — many more miles.
“Longer service days both earlier in the morning and later at night and we’re putting up a lot more miles on the vehicles, so they’re reaching their mileage useful life a lot quicker than they had previously, “ Kessler said.
He added they were trying to update the fleet, however, some buses go back years.
“We have a number of newer fleet that we’ve been buying since 2013. However, we still have some buses that go back to 2007 and earlier.”
Phoenix transit officials said they planned to continue pursuing federal grant money for bus replacement in the future.
