The strange case of Highland Park hybrid buses
Back in the summer of 2016, I went to the city of Highland Park, a pretty damn well-off North Shore suburb of Chicago, to do an article for the Highland Park Landmark. I was at the city's Metra station, which doubled as a transportation hub for the Pace bus that serve the city, when I saw something I've never seen before. One of the buses wasn't painted the usual Pace blue-and-white - it was painted green.
What it was wasn't a mystery - the "hybrid bus" lettering on the sides was a big giveaway. And it also explained the green. But I wondered why I've never seen buses like this anywhere else in the many, many suburbs served by Pace. What made Highland Park so special?
The mystery only deepened when I later poked around Pace's website and discovered that there were only two hybrid buses in existence. Pace launched them in 2012 as part of its push to be more environmentally friendly... And that was all I could find. Why did Pace stop at two? And, again, why did those buses wind up at Highland Park, out of all places?
And then... I didn't exactly forget about it, but I had other things to worry about. Then, last Christmas, my mom got me "I Love Chicago Transit" mug and T-shirt featuring not just a CTA bus, a Pace bus, a Metra train and a South Shore Line train, but just about every single bus and train model that transports passengers throughout greater Chicagoland, including some of the more obscure stuff, like a ChicaGo Dash express bus... and the distinctly green-colored Pace bus.
At this point, I decided to see if I could get an article out of it. It took me a few months but, to make a long story short, I was finally able to put together an article for Streetsblog Chicago.
So what is up with the Highland Park hybrid buses? Read the article and find out.
What it was wasn't a mystery - the "hybrid bus" lettering on the sides was a big giveaway. And it also explained the green. But I wondered why I've never seen buses like this anywhere else in the many, many suburbs served by Pace. What made Highland Park so special?
The mystery only deepened when I later poked around Pace's website and discovered that there were only two hybrid buses in existence. Pace launched them in 2012 as part of its push to be more environmentally friendly... And that was all I could find. Why did Pace stop at two? And, again, why did those buses wind up at Highland Park, out of all places?
And then... I didn't exactly forget about it, but I had other things to worry about. Then, last Christmas, my mom got me "I Love Chicago Transit" mug and T-shirt featuring not just a CTA bus, a Pace bus, a Metra train and a South Shore Line train, but just about every single bus and train model that transports passengers throughout greater Chicagoland, including some of the more obscure stuff, like a ChicaGo Dash express bus... and the distinctly green-colored Pace bus.
At this point, I decided to see if I could get an article out of it. It took me a few months but, to make a long story short, I was finally able to put together an article for Streetsblog Chicago.
So what is up with the Highland Park hybrid buses? Read the article and find out.