New Flyer Industries Inc. was advised last week that Ottawa’s City Council has approved the purchase of 306 new articulated clean diesel buses for approximately $184.4 million.

This approval includes the exercising of 80 options plus an additional 226 articulated buses under the existing bus procurement contract between Ottawa and New Flyer. The new buses will have the latest D60LFR enhanced design and will be outfitted with a 2010 EPA compliant Cummins engine; a mini-hybrid cooling package; an anti-graffiti package; smart bus technology for reliability monitoring and an extended industry-leading warranty program.

This purchase allows the City of Ottawa to replace its older articulated bus fleet with modern and fuel efficient D60LFR buses via an innovative arrangement where New Flyer has provided incentive pricing and has agreed to take in trade, OC Transpo’s existing fleet of 226 articulated buses. This fleet was originally built and sold by New Flyer to the City of Ottawa and the current average age of these buses is approximately nine years.

Key benefits of this agreement for Ottawa include an estimated 26 percent reduction in fuel consumption and an estimated 15 percent reduction in maintenance costs, in addition to being an entirely new 60-foot articulated bus fleet for the citizens of Ottawa. Further, the upgraded propulsion system saves approximately 1.98M Kgs of NOx and approximately 51.4K Kgs of particulate over the next nine years. This is an estimated reduction to the environmental footprint left by the buses of more than 90 percent.

The first buses are expected to enter production in July 2010, with delivery of the new fleet anticipated to start in August 2010, and completed delivery to occur within approximately one year.