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Broadway, Clark, LSD And Western Express Buses Getting Rehabs

By DNAinfo Staff | May 11, 2017 12:30pm
 cta bus plugger stock photo file photo
cta bus plugger stock photo file photo
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Flickr/zolk

CHICAGO — Some 208 hybrid articulated buses will be get overhauls under a $54 million plan accounced by the CTA.

The buses, marked by their accordian-like centers that allow them to bend while turning, currently serve some of the busiest bus routes in the city, the CTA said.

Routes benefiting from the "gut rehabs" include:

• No.14 Jeffrey Jump

• No. 22 Clark

• No. 26 South Shore Express

• No. 36 Broadway

• No. X49 Western Express

• "Nearly all" express routes that travel along Lake Shore Drive

Since 2011, the CTA purchased more than 500 new buses and overhauled another 1,000. After the most recent 208 are overhauled, some 94 percent of the fleet "will be new or like new," the CTA said.

The CTA said the buses being overhauled had an average of 260,000 miles of use. Each bus takes about a month to overhaul, the agency said, with rebuilt engines and suspension systems, new higher capacity hybrid batteries and rehabbed heating and air conditioning units as well as new seating.

The project extends the life of the buses by six years, said CTA president Dorval R. Carter.

In a statement, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that when he took office six years ago the "CTA was operating a rapidly aging fleet."

"We've turned that around with new trains and buses that are creating a transit system ready to meet the needs of the 21st Century," Emanuel said.

The work is expected to begin later this year and continue through 2019, the CTA said.