National Bus TraderThe Magazine of Bus Equipment for the United States and CanadaVolume XL, No. 8 July, 2017

Serving the bus industry since 1977.Visit us at www.busmag.com.

• Vicinity – A Mid-Size Bus Success Story• Prevost Conversion Shells

• The Bus Accident in Red Lion, Delaware

• N

atio

nalBus Trader Magazine •

1977-2017

Anniversary40th

Serving

the bus industry for 40

year

s

6/7/17 12:39 PM Page 1

In less than 10 years a new mid-size busfrom Vancouver, British Columbia notonly became a major player in the Cana-

dian bus market but also broke into the busmarket in the United States. Designed fromscratch to fill a specific need, the Vicinity

transit bus from Grande West Transportationhas become an obvious success story. Whatmakes this situation interesting is that it isa classic example of developing a newdesign that meets operator needs in the mid-size bus category.

Mid-Size Buses

Many people will define mid-size busesas a separate type. On one end you havethe full-size transit buses and coaches withtheir amenities, durability and higher price.On the other end you have the body-on-chassis and cutaway shuttle buses withtheir economical price but with feweramenities and less durability. Many oper-ators seek an intermediate class of mid-sizebuses. While they will seat fewer passen-gers than the full-size transit buses andcoaches, they will ideally cost less and bemore economical in operation. Unfortu-nately, this may be difficult for manufac-turers to accomplish because this mid-sizebus market is typically smaller in size andhence offers fewer sales.

The availability of mid-size buses haschanged over the years. A good example isthat General Motors gave up 35-footcoaches in 1978 while MCI did the same in1980. The reason was a lack of buyer inter-est at both manufacturers. My memory isthat the reason for the lack of interest in theshorter coaches was price; only about a$15,000 difference between the 35-foot and40-foot models.

A classic example goes back to post-warGeneral Motors transit buses. While thelarger transit buses had additional ameni-ties and diesel power, the economicalsmaller transit buses were simpler andpowered by gasoline. I once worked for atransit operation that had both types.While I would admit that the smaller gaso-line-powered GM transit buses were moreeconomical and less sophisticated, theyserved our company well and I spent manyhours behind the wheel of those “Jimmys”as we called them.

At least some of the success of whatbecame Ontario Bus Industries and Oriongoes back to this type of bus. Their originaloffering was a mid-size bus that wasintended to replicate the small GM transitsin providing an economical price, econom-ical operation and substantial durability.Again, these were the key factors operatorswere looking for in this mid-size bus marketand this made the company successful. Inlater years Orion would offer larger busesand open a plant in New York State to enterthe U.S. market. It was the economical yetdurable mid-size bus that got them startedin the first place.

Moving to more recent times, I wouldsuggest that Temsa provided the same typeof situation in coaches. For close to threedecades, shorter coaches popped in and outof the U.S. and Canadian coach market.While some might please buyers with eco-nomical price and operation, it was difficultto maintain production for the smaller num-bers involved. Temsa got into this market in2008 and had the major advantage of years

16 • National Bus Trader / July, 2017

The story behind the Vicinity started when BC Transit in British Columbia developed a need fora heavy-duty, mid-size bus for use on lighter patronized routes. Grande West Transportation startedfrom scratch and developed the Vicinity to meet this need. Shown here is a Vicinity built for MARTAin Atlanta, the first transit agency in the United States to order the Vicinity.

Vicinity – A Mid-Size BusSuccess Story

And production in the United States

by Larry PlachnoPhotos courtesy of Grande West Transportation

of experience in building mid-size buses.Hence, they could meet the requirements ofeconomical price and operation coupledwith much of the amenities and durabilityof the big coaches.

The Birth of Grande West and the Vicinity

As mentioned earlier, the Vicinity fromGrande West is the latest example of beingsuccessful because of providing an econom-ical yet durable mid-size bus. Their storystarts back in 2008 with BC Transit, the tran-sit agency based in Vancouver, BritishColumbia. The people at BC Transit beganlooking at better alternatives for their fleet.They were operating body-on-chassis busesand cutaways on less-patronized routes.While their purchase price was economical,

management was unhappy with both oper-ating costs as well as shortcomings with theirlack of amenities and dealing with the dis-abled. The BC Transit management lookedat running full-size transit buses on less-patronized routes, but that also had its short-comings. Most notably it was rather expen-sive to run a full-size bus for only a handfulof passengers.

Interest at BC Transit turned to locatinga low-floor, mid-size bus that was econom-ical to purchase and operate yet retainedmuch of the amenities and durability ofthe larger transit buses. Management atBC Transit joined with TransLink and OCTranspo in Ottawa to seek out and pur-chase this type of bus. They were initiallydisappointed because it appeared that no

company was currently building such abus on the American market.

This gap in the market and resultingopportunity was noted by William Trainer.His previous experience included owningand managing heavy construction dealer-ships, import and export experience, andbringing new products into Canada. He cre-ated Grande West Transportation in Alder-grove, British Columbia to meet this needin the transit market and became its CEO.He and four business partners initiallyinvested one million dollars each to foundGrande West Transportation to address thisgap in the bus market. As an interesting sidenote, I might mention that Aldergrove isactually much closer to the U.S.-Canadianborder than it is to Vancouver.

A partnership developed between thepeople at Grande West Transportation andthe management and staff at BC Transit.This resulted in a sharing of informationto come up with a design that would allowGrande West to match the needs of BCTransit. Meetings were held with BC Tran-sit’s operations, management, drivers, ser-vice technicians as well as special interestgroups. From this the designers at GrandeWest Transportation learned what the oper-ating people wanted to see in a new prod-uct. Equally important, they learned whatwas required in the way of price and oper-ating cost to make it workable.

Instead of starting with an existing bus,the designers at Grande West began witha clean sheet of paper. What emerged wasa low-floor transit bus with a lighter yetdurable integral design. There was also amajor effort to use standard componentsincluding the economical Cumminsengine. This initial design was 27.5 feetlong, 98 inches wide, seated 23 passengersand became known as the Vicinity.

Now that Grande West had much of thedesign work and engineering done, thenext step was looking for a manufacturing

National Bus Trader / July, 2017 • 17

The original Vicinity design for BC Transit was 27.5 feet long, had a single door and seated 23 pas-sengers. Other transit agencies expanded the basic concept to two doors and lengths of 30 and 35feet. Today, you can also order the Vicinity with CNG power as well as the conventional dieselengine.

The interior of the Vicinity is available in several configurations. This 30-foot bus offers space for wheelchairs towards the front of the bus.

The 30- and 35-foot models of the Vicinity can transport more passengersand hence offer a center door to speed passenger exit from the rear.

partner. Their efforts remind me of a sim-ilar situation in the mid-1950s when Con-tinental Trailways sought a company tobuild what became their new Eagle coach.In both situations, they failed to find aninterested American company. Trailwayseventually turned to Kässbohrer in Ulm,Germany to build their Eagle. GrandeWest fortunately had some import exper-tise and was able to make arrangementswith the Weichai Group in China. Theyhad previously built buses under a jointventure with Daimler.

A prototype was delivered in Februaryof 2010 for testing during the WinterOlympics. This initial testing was extendedto 21 months. The bus proved itself wellwhile the testing permitted some adjust-ments and improvements. BC Transit wassufficiently impressed to order 15 buses forfurther evaluation of their performance.These were delivered in August of 2013 afterwhich sales started coming in and produc-tion was scaled up.

The original Vicinity design offered alength of 27.5 feet, a width of 98 inches andCummins diesel power. A 13.5-foot wheel-base provided a turning radius of about 26feet. Empty, the bus weighed in at a littlemore than 20,000 pounds but offered a GVWof more than 29,000 pounds. While the buscould seat as many as 23 passengers, a rampand various interior configurations wereavailable for wheelchair positions.

As work moved along, additional invest-ment was required. Grande West Trans-portation tapped into the public markets tobring total raised funds up to about $25 mil-lion. Initial operations were run fromWilliam Trainer’s business office and garagein Aldergrove. Initially, Trainer sectioned offa part of the existing garage for bus opera-tions. Later, additional space was leased inthe facility across the road. This has becomethe Canadian headquarters for Grande WestTransportation.

The manufacturing procedure forCanadian sales and U.S. private fleet saleshas been to ship components to Weichai’sfacility in Xiamen, China. Here, the inte-gral bus is built and components areassembled. From there they are shippedto Aldergrove, British Columbia for finalassembly. This includes IT installation,sometimes seats and interior items, decalsand other exterior work, and other cus-tomer requests. Pre-delivery inspectiontakes place at this same time.

There were a few minor changes fromthe prototype to the 2013 production. Themost obvious being at the lower front areaaround the headlights. The buses now hadlarge, single LED headlights while the turnsignals were moved to where the fog lights

were located earlier. Once regular produc-tion got started, orders started coming inand transit agencies began asking for modifications.

In 2014 a new prototype was built witha length of 30 feet and two doors. It wasshown at two trade shows to illustrate theavailability of the 30-foot length and twodoors. In late 2014 it went to trial opera-tions at Oakville Transit but was eventuallysold to Cape Breton in 2015. A second 30-foot, two-door bus was built in 2015. Thisone went to the FTA site at Altoona for test-ing between late October of 2015 and lateMay of 2016. It did very well and testedbest in class with only a few minor repairsand a fairly high fuel efficiency.

18 • National Bus Trader / July, 2017

Final assembly of the Vicinity buses for Canadian buyers takes place at the Grande West facilityin Aldergrove, British Columbia. Any final installation and decal work is done here while pre-delivery inspection takes place at the same time. Aldergrove is located only a few miles north ofthe United States-Canadian border.

An important feature of the Vicinity is its low floor. This makes it possibleto use a single ramp for handicapped passengers and their wheelchairs.

The Vicinity offers several features like the big transit buses. Noteworthyis the use of standard components including the efficient Cummins engine.

Since the original prototype, the Vicinitybuses had been built with the ZF Ecomat4 transmission. In 2015, Vicinity productionchanged over to the new ZF Ecolife trans-mission. It was also in 2015 that GrandeWest announced the availability of a 35-foot version of the Vicinity. Already com-pliant with Canadian laws, Grande Westannounced in April of 2015 that the Vicinitywas now fully compliant to sell in theUnited States.

Perhaps what was the most importantdevelopment of 2015 is that Grande WestTransportation was doing so well in salesin Canada with the Vicinity that it beganlooking for other markets. On June 1, 2015,an exclusive U.S. bus distribution agree-ment was announced with ABG Distribu-tion LLC, a part of Alliance Bus Group.Alliance is a major bus dealer with facilitiesfrom New Hampshire to Florida and westto Louisiana and Texas. In addition to awide range of body-on-chassis buses they

also offer CAIO coaches and specialty vehi-cles. This prompted Grande West andAlliance to work towards making theVicinity compliant with Buy America pro-visions so it could be sold to transit agen-cies in the United States.

The Vicinity continued to improve andexpand in 2016. Starting with the OakvilleTransit order, the Vicinity could now beordered with two-piece slide glide doorsand EASB bumpers. In early November,Alliance announced the first U.S. order forthe Vicinity bus. Standard Parking at theHartsfield-Jackson Atlanta InternationalAirport ordered 13 buses. In December,Grande West achieved the much-awaitedBuy American compliance that required60 percent U.S content. Compliance withthis would allow the Vicinity to be purchased by transit agencies in theUnited States.

Although somewhat unremarked at thattime, an announcement on November 30,2016 indicated that the Cape Breton RegionalMunicipality had placed their third orderfor Vicinity buses. The reality is that theGrande West Vicinity bus had made majorinroads into the Canadian mid-size bus mar-ket in an amazingly short time. The Vicinitywas already operating in more than 40 Cana-dian cities and orders had been receivedfrom others. Locations where the Vicinitywas operating in Canada included eightprovinces, literally from coast to coast. It hadbecome accepted as the new mid-size transitbus for Canada.

In January of 2017, Grande Westannounced that the Vicinity would now beavailable with CNG (Compressed NaturalGas) power for operators seeking to reducepollution. The CNG Cummins ISB G enginewas now optionally available and could bespecified on 2017 orders. Future plans

National Bus Trader / July, 2017 • 19

As orders increasedfrom around Canada,Grande West beganoffering a 35-foot ver-sion of the Vicinity tomeet the requests oftransit agencies. It wasalso offered with thecenter door. Beforelong, the Vicinity wasoperating in morethan 40 Canadiancities and additionalorders were comingin.

Taken at dusk, this photo shows a Vicinity bus operating for OakvilleTransit in Ontario. Vicinity buses now operate virtually coast to coast inCanada.

This 27.5-foot Vicinity operates for Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, locatedabout 25 miles southeast of Montreal in eastern Montérégie in theprovince of Quebec.

included further power options with a bat-tery electric bus and a hybrid bus.

Built in the United States

In late March, Grande West announceda manufacturing agreement with AllianceBus Group to produce Vicinity buses in theUnited States. These buses will comply withFTA Buy America provisions and hence canbe purchased by transit agencies in theUnited States.

Alliance Bus Group will invest in excessof $1 million to transform their existing70,000 square foot manufacturing and ser-vice facility with tooling and test equipmentnecessary for production, improvementsand will also include a customer inspectionand delivery acceptance area. Production isexpected to start in the third quarter of 2017.At that same time Alliance announced thesale of 10 Vicinity buses to the MetropolitanAtlanta Regional Transit Authority(MARTA). As a result, MARTA became thefirst transit agency in the United States toorder Vicinity buses.

Plans are that Alliance will do the finalassembly work in Atlanta to comply withBuy America regulations. Production willstart with a few buses as complete KD kitsand then move to shells only. Grande Westwill have an electrical engineer and a pro-duction engineer in Atlanta to oversee the

process and there will be a liaison with theengineers at Grande West’s overseas man-ufacturing site. The Alliance staff will do theassembly labor so that the buses will complywith Buy America regulations. Atlanta willbuild Vicinity buses in the 27.5-foot, 30-footand 35-foot lengths. Production is expectedto start with five Vicinity buses a month andquickly ramp up to 10 a month. Additionalcapacity will be added as required with atotal capacity of about 60 buses a month.

Buy America production and the result-ing orders in the United States haveincreased production of the Vicinity. Basedon figures available, it looks like Canadianand U.S. deliveries will be around 267 busesthrough the first quarter of 2018. These num-bers may well increase in the near future asboth sales and production in the UnitedStates grows. All of which goes to show thatif you can solve an obvious need for mid-size buses, the buyers will come. q

20 • National Bus Trader / July, 2017

BC Transit broughtthe Vicinity bus to lifeby finding a need fora mid-size low-floor,heavy-duty transitbus. Today, BC Transithas several Vicinitybuses operating ondifferent routes. T hisone was pho-tographed in Chilli-wack.