HT to GeoTransExplorer…

CyRide, bless their hearts, always comes off looking like a mini-jewel among transit providers. By using student workers, they keep operating costs and fares relatively low—difficult to do, by contrast, in big-metro systems with unionized shops. They connect town and gown, which gets them ridership, and students ride free. Any college-town transit company that isn’t catering to students is missing important opportunities to serve people and look good in the process.

They also have ticketbooks; unfortunately, they don’t discount them the way they do their pass program (and the way they should).

And they have Charles Grassley, who has been a senator from Iowa since Jesus was a carpenter and who can get them big, sweet chunks of Federal money.

Their latest announcement: they are using federal funding—they just got a huge dollop of ARRA funding—to replace part of their fleet with hybrid buses:

Ames Tribune > Archives > Ames Tribune > News > ‘Cybrid’ CyRide buses on the way

The cool part? Ames residents are being to asked to vote a design. It isn’t often that buses are treated like a real part of the urban aesthetic, so this is a very nice way to market their new buses.