GoRaleigh goes vinyl: City replaces ‘nasty’ bus seats with a new material
When people board a GoRaleigh bus, they have a decision to make as they move down the aisle: Do I really want to sit on that?
The cloth seats on GoRaleigh buses have not aged well. The cloth absorbs spilled food, drink and other substances, creating stains, odors and wet spots that make riders keep hunting for something better.
That’s changing. GoRaleigh is replacing the worn cloth seats with new vinyl ones that are easier to keep clean. The city transit agency is swapping out the old seats one or two buses at a time and hopes to have 85 done by mid-summer.
GoRaleigh has traditionally gone with cloth seats for comfort, said David Walker, the city’s transportation manager. They’re padded, and cloth was considered a better material.
But keeping them fresh and hygienic has been a challenge.
“Regardless of the amount of cleaning you do — the steam cleaning — sometimes it’s hard to get those stains out of the seats,” Walker said.
Riders notice.
“The old seats are really nasty,” said James Kirk, a mental health tech who rides GoRaleigh about three times a week. “You’ve got to guess what liquid substances are on the seats. It’s a game: What are you going to find?”
Other transit agencies switching from cloth to vinyl
A GoRaleigh bus has an expected lifespan of 12 years. The seats — really the padding on the bottom and back — generally last about half that long and get replaced.
GoRaleigh decided to go vinyl last fall. But it turns out that transit agencies in Washington, Dallas and several other cities are doing the same thing, so the new seats were on back order for several months.
The job of installing the new seats falls to Cody Lee and Daniel Moore in GoRaleigh’s body shop off Poole Road.
Lee and Moore have known each other for 30 years and worked together at GoRaleigh for 11. With a rhythm honed by lots of practice, they wordlessly transform a bus interior in a few hours.
The process involves prying off the old seat bottoms and backs. Sometimes the men find pennies or quarters hidden under the cushions, but mostly they uncover wrappers and other trash, Moore said.
The bare seat frames get a generous spray of cleaner and disinfectant, then a thorough wipe that turns white rags dark with grime. Then Lee and Moore install the new vinyl.
GoRaleigh has 115 buses in its fleet. In addition to 85 transitioning from cloth to vinyl, the city has begun to receive new buses with hard vinyl plastic seats that are also easy to keep clean and are surprisingly comfortable considering they have no padding, Walker said.
By year’s end, more than 100 GoRaleigh buses will have either hard or cushioned vinyl seats.
Converting a bus from cloth to vinyl costs about $8,000, Walker said. GoRaleigh considers it money well spent.
“The feedback we’ve received in person as we’ve been out riding around and talking to our riders, they’re pleased,” he said. “They really do appreciate the fact that they don’t have to worry about sitting down on a seat and standing up with wet pants.”
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This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
