Yesterday I was running some errands and was driving on Cascade Avenue in Tigard when I looked over at Highway 217 and saw not one, but TWO of those mysterious, ex-OCTA D40LFs.
On a hunch, I drove over to a neighborhood that borders RAZ Transportation's garage. Unfortunately the developers were nice enough to put up a seven foot high concrete wall but I was able to gain a vantage point where I could see the rooflines of the various buses that they own. (I guess I could have driven to their front entrance off of 99W, but they might have wondered why I was looking in with binoculars.) Sure enough there were at least three D40LFs in there. For being subjected to TriMet's bland fleet of nothing but D40LFs, Gillig Phantoms and Flxible Metros, it's a bus-fan's paradise to see such a variety of buses that they own. And RAZ has owned other transit buses in the past; most notably RTSes but I believe they even had a few Flxible Metros from time to time, and they even owned some ex-NJ Transit MC-9s for awhile (notable for having the flip-dot head sign that no other MC-9s had.)
What I do know is that these are ex-Orange County Transportation Agency vehicles built in 1995 and were retired in 2007 (hey, after 12 years of service!) and replaced with C40LFs. They were used for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Why or how RAZ got them, beats me. How they are using them, I don't know, but they've been spotted multiple times on 217 (in the evening hours) and at least once on the south end of Tigard on 99W, and one other time at the Barbur Transit Center (that one is a real head-scratcher). I know RAZ operates a wide variety of services so my guess is that they are being used on Intel or Nike campus shuttles, but I can't explain why the bus would have been at Barbur TC - certainly, RAZ wouldn't use such a vehicle for a Spirit Mountain Casino trip...
1 comment:
That is interesting!
Maybe we should get a guess pass and check this place out!
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