As mention on the Frankford Terminal site the 8000 series buses with the Cummins ISL 280/ZF transmission are set to arrive between 10-14 weeks. Which is around the end of June Early July. Once the ZF flyers come into service there has already been rumors going for a massive bus removement taken place. Here’s my theories on why SEPTA may have more NABIs position at southern than there is now.
SEPTA wants to have an all ULSD depot. This type of diesel keeps emissions downs in SEPTA buses. You don’t need any devices to help make the engines run on this type of fuel. You just filling it up and it’s ready to go it’s like going to a gas station and filling it up with 93 octane fuel rather than 89 percent octane the engine with run better and smoother. However in this case the engine may just generate less emissions.
As for the rest of my theory SEPTA wants to keep all of the #2 diesel buses separated from ULSD diesel buses. After this pending order of 100 buses, which will run on this fuel, my guess is that it would be cheaper to keep all of their buses that run on one type of fuel at one depot.
Now if you read that information from this post (link listed below this post) carefully it would say the only buses that will be at southern would be the hybrids, the 100 Cummins Flyers, and a Group of NABIs running of this fuel. There has already been a few rumors floating around that frontier and other depots will loose some of their NABIs if not of them in replace of new flyers. I don’t know how true that rumor is however taking it carefully and the official word from SEPTA. IT looks like we may have a major bus replacement on our hands. I guess we shall see by the summer.
Plus on top of that since SEPTA is trying to save money it would cost nothing or near nothing to train the maintence at southern on these buses since they will have the ISL engine and the existing hybrids has this engine. And the bus will have a ZF ECOMAT II transmission which is found in the 57xx fleet.
( http://s9.invisionfree.com/Philadelphia_Transit/index.php?showtopic=56 )