Have you ridden the ZeroBus yet? (You’d better know what the ZeroBus is.) The cost-free, emission-free, electric Downtown circulator just got a little bit better with the launch today of its new app that details real-time bus locations, arrivals at stops, and displays popular destinations at each stop along its East–West and North–South routes.
The free Apple and Android app from TARC, the Transit Authority of River City, is summarized in the video above, provided by the authority.
“By clicking on a stop on a route map, app users can find out when the next ZeroBus will arrive there,” a press release reads. “App users can also search for and locate over 100 downtown destinations.”
To download the new app, search for ZeroBus in the Apple App Store or on Google Play.
When ZeroBus launched in January 2015, the fleet was to be ten buses strong, but only nine buses make the circuit today. “We didn’t get to take delivery of the 10th bus in the initial order,” TARC’s Kay Stewart told Broken Sidewalk. There was an incident at the South Carolina manufacturer Proterra and the company no longer makes the short bus model. “The nine ZeroBuses we have has been adequate to fulfill the schedule they’re on,” Stewart said.
In February 2015, TARC announced it received funding for five more electric buses, and Stewart said because of the mix-up, Proterra is now making that order six so the total number of buses will still add up. But the six new buses, to begin rolling out this summer, won’t be ZeroBuses.
Instead, the new buses, longer at 40 feet, will run on standard TARC routes that overlap with the existing electric charging infrastructure. They’ll look like ZeroBuses with a futuristic aesthetic, but they’ll be introduced on other routes reaching farther out into the city. No new charging stations are currently planned. Stewart declined to name which routes the new buses will use, but said the first buses could roll out in June.
