B.C. Transit opted for used over new when it came to adding fare boxes to its inventory, saving nearly $300,000 in the process.
The current model of fare box costs $13,000 new. But with a plan to phase them out, B.C. Transit was reluctant to purchase more. Future fare boxes will be simpler and less expensive.
“At just over $13,000 per bus, it is a tough decision to purchase our existing fare boxes when we know that we will be phasing them out,” said Erinn Pinkerton, B.C. Transit’s president and CEO.
B.C. Transit contacted “almost every transit agency” in North America that uses the Cents-a-Bill fare boxes, hoping they had some to spare, without success, Pinkerton said.
Then someone at a B.C. Transit executive meeting joked that they should consider buying used fare boxes on eBay.
“We all laughed at the idea,” Pinkerton said in a staff newsletter. “However, after trying unsuccessfully to come up with other options, we realized quickly that we had nothing to lose by considering this further.”
They had scoured eBay and other sites unsuccessfully when one of B.C. Transit’s mechanics told them about a Facebook group dedicated to transit memorabilia and bus parts. “We joined the group and called the moderator,” Pinkerton said. “[They] put us in contact with three vendors in California that, combined, had 28 fare boxes for sale.”
A small team of B.C. Transit employees flew to California, rented a U-Haul truck and purchased the fare boxes, Pinkerton said, adding it was a challenge getting the equipment back to Victoria.
The team drove the U-Haul full of fare boxes to the Las Vegas warehouse of bus-building company Alexander Dennis, whose staff packaged them on pallets and shipped them.
“Four days later, our fare boxes arrived and we were able to have them service ready for about $2,500 each, including all the adventure costs to get them,” Pinkerton said.
