Since about 1997, Metro has used this paint scheme with a yellow bottom, black middle, and blue, teal or green top. Later Metro added a red top for RapidRide and a purple top for trolleybuses, but the other diesel buses still don’t seem to have any color-coding. The new battery-electric buses seem to all have blue tops, so I think Metro should do something about this color-coding. I have a proposal below:
Blue: battery-electric
Green: diesel or hybrid (the diesel-only buses are being phased out)
Teal: DART
Purple: trolleybus
Red: RapidRide
Wherez yer proposal?
You see where I list the colors vertically and then put a service level next to them? Read that to see what my proposal is.
I think it’d be more useful to color code them by level of service.
Red: RapidRIde
Purple: 10-12 minute headway or better
Blue: 15 minute headway or better
Green: 20-30 minute headway or worse
how would you handle routes that have varying headway through the day?
Good question. I don’t know. I was basing this concept off of LA Metro Local and Rapid buses, but it’s not a 1:1 analogue. In the Local/Rapid case, it’s helpful in the sense that you know red buses are not gonna stop as often, but here in Seattle all buses not named RapidRide are in theory local buses (or peak expresses) that make all stops. On that note, peak expresses also don’t fit in my proposed scheme. Oops.
Isn’t this is a solution searching for a problem?
+1. I would rather see the money it would cost to repaint hundreds of buses go into actual service, instead.
Ah, my favorite kind of comment “I would rather they spent…” instead of.
How about they all get the same color scheme with the exception of RR. That would save $$$.
Explain how they would save money? Paint is applied no matter what color.
DART should also be an exception. RR and DART are the two service levels that are different from the regular bus.
Why do you think that different colors are a big expense?
@Joseph Singer I didn’t say that, it was Eric who said that. If there is any cheap option, it would be to have a bare metal bus with maybe a few words on it, similar to how Chicago’s railcars are basically bare metal. I’m not sure how much people would like that, though.