For SEPTA, It’s Easy Being Green

In an effort to transition to a “green” vehicle fleet, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) procured its first-ever fleet of electric buses from Proterra. SEPTA then requested that LTK participate in structural design reviews with the bus manufacturer.

LTK provided a comprehensive array of engineering, supplier and project management support services for this project. Its responsibilities included:

• A thorough analysis of industry standards for bus structures
• Analysis of Proterra’s bus design
• A review of all reports produced by Penn State’s Altoona Testing Facility to generate statistics on new bus designs
• Review of SEPTA’s route ridership statistics and the development of average loading statistics for the new bus fleet
• Review of SEPTA’s existing bus fleet to generate statistics and profiles
• Review of all pilot tests conducted on electric buses commissioned in North America

Throughout the assignment, LTK used its experience and diversified technical resources to meet the many schedule, technical and operational challenges faced by SEPTA:

• LTK quickly assessed structural improvements that could be implemented quickly and efficiently
• LTK developed a comprehensive database of all testing conducted in the bus industry that could be leveraged in other projects to provide information on a variety of metrics
• LTK’s modifications were able to be applied to buses for other transit agencies, including New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority