WOODBRIDGE — Ten brand new buses are parked in Woodbridge waiting for their new colors.
The new commuter coaches built by Motor Coach Industries today are a bright white, but soon they will don the new colors of a rebranded OmniRide.
Gone will be the teal color scheme of the old buses. Instead, these new coaches will display the transit agency’s new logo with royal blue and bright green colors.
OmniRide Board of Commissioners Chairman Ruth Anderson said the shiny new buses will have less room for display ads as to not cover up the new design.
A total of 37 new buses at a cost of $22 million have been ordered to replace older coaches in the fleet. They’ll all be wrapped in the new design, said OmniRide Executive Director Bob Schneider.
It’s the agency’s first major bus replacement order in the past five years. Riders won’t notice much of a difference between the new and old buses. And like their predecessors, they run on diesel but will emit fewer emissions.
The transit agency earlier this year decided to stop marketing itself as the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission, or PRTC, opting instead to adopt the branding for its commuter bus service itself OmniRide across the organization.
Other services like OmniLink local bus service in Prince William County, Manassas, and Manassas Park, and OmniMatch ride-sharing service are now all known as OmniRide.
In the coming months, OmniRide plans to roll out a new real-time bus tracking service that will allow riders to see the location of their next bus on their smartphones. OmniRide is currently testing the technology already in use by other local transit agencies in Fairfax County.
