Bus Barn

Bus Barn Storage Facility Rehab and Upgrade

This project is for the rehab and upgrade to WRTA’s Bus Barn Storage Facility. The bus barn storage facility consists of two connected buildings that store 46 large buses (35’), 28 small buses (LTV 26’) and 4 modified minivans. These vehicles are used to provide fixed route transit service in the cities of Youngstown and Warren along with the surrounding suburbs. Our LTV and minivans provide ADA coverage and county wide trips to those that don’t have access to fixed route or ADA service.

The Bus Barn Storage (1c) Facility is the original bus storage building that was build in the 1970s and has not been upgraded to handle storing any of the large transit buses. It has roughly 11,450 sq ft of storage.

The Bus Barn Storage (1b) Facility was added in the 1980s which provides parking for the large transit buses. This facility has about 27,778 sq ft of storge.

The Bus Barn Storage Facility have been maintained in operating condition but the HVAC, roof, safety systems, doors and door controllers are all past their useful life. The cost to maintain the system increases every year and at some point, they will fail to the point that they would need replaced.

This rehabilitation of the Bus Barn Storage Facility will bring the infrastructure up to a better state of repair by replacing the roof, electrical, safety systems, door, door controls, HVAC and other systems that are at or near the end of their useful life.

The upgrade portion of this project for the Bus Barn Storage Facility to include charging equipment for battery electric buses along with upgrading the electrical system to handle the load of charging buses. As WRTA begins the process of transitioning our vehicles from diesel to battery electric we will need the ability to “fuel” the vehicles. Without updating the Bus Barn Storage Facility to include the charging infrastructure WRTA will not be able to migrate fleets from fossil-based fuels to battery electric to reduce our emissions and to be environmentally sustainable.

In addition, the upgrade of the Bus Barn Storage Facility includes adding solar panels to the roof. The addition of the solar panels will reduce the impact on the electrical grid by reducing our demand on the electric infrastructure. This will also reduce our need to use electricity that may be generated by fossil fuels.