LEWISTON — Phil Nadeau would gladly buy a good used bus — and if he has to go to Atlanta or Las Vegas to get it, he will.

“We are at the point right now that if we see a reasonable opportunity, we’re going to take it really seriously,” Nadeau, chairman of the Lewiston-Auburn Transit Committee, said Tuesday. “We’ll do as much as we can over the phone and looking at pictures, but if things look good, we may very well be hopping a plane.”

Faced with a small, aging fleet that has had maintenance issues, Nadeau said he’d like to see Citylink avoid any service interruptions this winter.

“In my opinion, we need at least three more used buses,” he said. “If we get approved to go out and buy new buses, there’s a process. After the bid award, bus construction, all of that — it’s a year or more.”

Nadeau said he’s looking far and wide for used buses to bolster his fleet, and planning contingencies, just in case.

“I found some that we’ll be talking about — a couple in Atlanta and a couple in Las Vegas,” Nadeau said. “They look like they are nice shape. But we are not going to buy anything sight unseen. So, we’ll have to go look at them, if they work out.”

Citylink’s nine route systems depend on having at least seven of its 11 buses operating to stay on schedule. That provides hour headways — roughly an hour between times a bus leaves a stop, drives the route and returns to that stop.

Four of Citylink’s buses were purchased in 2006 and have had maintenance issues for years. Another is the 2008 downtown shuttle bus, which is nearing the end of its useful life.

Three others were purchased in 2011 and have been reliable, but are each in need of $300,000 in scheduled maintenance. Citylink has three other replacement buses it bought used from Portland last year, but they are 1996 and 1997 buses.

“So we should be able to operate with what we have, seven buses out and four spares,” Nadeau said. “But given the current condition of the fleet, we are having a hard time.”

Citylink reduced service several times last winter because of bus maintenance problems. The system shut down once because it didn’t have enough buses.

Nadeau said that the current plan is to keep all routes running with two hours between stops if there are at least four working buses. Only the downtown shuttle would be shut down in that situation.

If the system goes down to three buses, he will work with Auburn’s staff to decide which route will be shut down.

“If that happens, western Maine will go out to the route with one of their vehicles and literally try to identify people that may be waiting and pick them up,” Nadeau said. “It’s obviously the least preferred way to go, and it’s why we’re trying to bulk up some on some buses now.”

staylor@sunjournal.com