The Wolfline transit system is introducing a new fleet of buses in August. The new fleet will include 40 buses, serve up to 3.2 million passengers in the next year and provide new features to help students travel around campus in a more efficient manner.
Assistant director for planning and operations for NCSU Transportation, Mike Kennon, spoke about the specifics of Wolfline and how the decision to change the fleet was reached.
“Wolfline service is provided by a third-party contractor, it’s not provided by university employees,” Kennon said. “North Carolina law requires us to go through a bid process and for a service like this, we can have a contract for up to 10 years. The previous contractor had to run the system for 10 years, and so we just recently re-bid the entire program.”
According to Kennon, effective in August, a new contractor is coming on board, and, in their contract, they are required to provide a new fleet.
“The fleet that we’ve got now is anywhere from six years to 10 plus years old, typically transit vehicles are replaced at 12 years,” Kennon said. “A good portion of the fleet was nearing the end of its age, so we required the new contractor to bring new buses. The university actually doesn’t own those vehicles, a contractor does.”
Byron Bryant, transit manager for NCSU Transportation, says that the new fleet will be able to serve more students as the new buses are bigger in size.
“The service capacity will actually increase by 8 to 10 percent, and that’s based on the fact that our current mixed fleet has shorter, smaller buses in it, and this will include all 40-foot standardized size buses,” Bryant said.
The new bus fleet will have more upgrades compared to the current Wolfline buses. These upgrades will include a new automated voice announcement system and a more fuel-efficient engine.
“The coolest new feature will be the automated voice announcement,” Bryant said. “All the buses will be outfitted with an automated bus announcement system, letting everyone know which stop is coming up next, or the current stop and that sort of thing that you see in other transit systems.”
Students will continue to have easy access to the bus schedule through TransLoc even after the new bus fleet is introduced.
There will be some small changes to the bus routes, which is typical, as the university grows and changes, says Kennon.
Bryant thinks that introducing the new Wolfline fleet in August will have a positive effect on campus, as the number of mechanic failures will decrease.
“Just the new fleet, I think, will give the community a better-looking and more efficient service, they’ll perform better, there’ll be less downtime,” Bryant said.
Kennon also mentioned that the new bus fleet will feature a logo designed by two students from the College of Design.
“It takes about a year from the time you order a bus until it arrives,” Kennon said. “We’ve been working on this project for close to nine months. Pretty early on in the project, one of things we reached out to the school of Design, was looking for update of our logo and scheme. So, the new paint scheme is actually designed by two of the College of Design students, so I think that’s pretty cool.”
The drivers, according to Bryant, have expressed an enthusiastic outlook when they saw the new buses.
“They were very excited to see the new buses. The feedback was very positive, so they were very excited,” Bryant said.
More information on the Wolfline bus system and its schedules can be found on the NCSU Transportation website.
The logo and color scheme featured on the sides of Wolfline buses in the new fleet are designed by two students from the College of Design. They pay tribute to staple NC State symbols such as the howling wolf and the colors red and black.
