City of Poughkeepsie Transit

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City of Poughkeepsie Transit is the municipal bus system serving the City of Poughkeepsie, New York as well as parts of the Town of Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park. The system operates five different regular routes and a service which serves students at Poughkeepsie Middle School and Poughkeepsie High School. All buses run mostly as unidirectional loops and meet at the corner of Main and Market streets adjacent to the west end of the former Main Mall. Buses run hourly middays, every 30-45 minutes in peak periods.

Service outside these areas is provided by the Dutchess County LOOP system, a division of the Dutchess County Division of Mass Transit. The two systems share a common garage and at times rumors of the two agencies merging to save money and improve service circulate but nothing has come to fruition. Transfers between both buses are available, this policy has been a complication of any merger talks given the losses City buses take from their usage.

[edit] Routes

The five main routes are:

Main Street: Serves businesses on Main Street, the commercial strip off of Route 44 in Arlington, Vassar College, and the western end of the city including the train station which serves Metro-North and Amtrak.
Southside: Serves residential areas in the southern part of Poughkeepsie as well as the northern commercial strip on Route 9.
Northside: Serves residential areas in the northern part of Poughkeepsie, Dutchess Community College, St. Francis Hospital, and the southern part of Hyde Park to that town's Stop & Shop supermarket. Prior to 2004, was two separate routes (Northside and Hospital), the merger of which was met with much objection.
Mall: A combination of the Southside and LOOP 2 routes, serves residential areas in Poughkeepsie before continuing on Route 9 to serve Poughkeepsie Galleria and South Hills Mall. Largely redundant and more expensive than it's LOOP counterpart ($1.00 vs. 75 cents), it has the lowest ridership in the system.
Shopper's Special: A weekday-only variant of the Main Street route that serves the commercial strip in Arlington, but via residential areas than the commercial Main Street.

[edit] Fleet

Current Fleet
(All buses are Wheelchair-accessible )

1993 Gillig Phantom 35TB96: 272-273, 275
1995 Champion Defender 25' minibus: 276
2002 Thomas Built Buses Transliner (35-foot): 280
2004 Gillig Phantom 35TB96: 281-282

Future Fleet
In early 2008, delivery of five new buses will be taken which will allow for the replacement of the older buses in the fleet and a bus for new services. [1] Four of these buses will be low-floor, diesel-electric hybrid buses while a fifth will be a replica trolley to be used for a new route in the development stage. Though the manufacturer of these buses is currently unknown, these buses will probably be numbered either 283-286 or 290-293.

Past Fleet

1976 GMC T6H-4523A ("New Look") 259
1978 GMC RTS TW-7603 260-261
1980 GMC RTS T7W-603 262-266
1988 Orion 01.501 (ex-NFTA) 277
- Acquired in 2001, this bus had the public nickname of "Buffalo Betty" as a nod to its heritage.
1990 Orion 01.507 ("Orion I") 268
1991-93 Gillig Phantom 35TB96: 269-271, 274