The Vermont Agency of Transportation will buy four electric buses to traverse the central part of the state with a $1 million “Low and No Emissions” grant from the Federal Transit Administration.
This is the fifth year in a row the state has received the grant.
In addition to the four electric cutaway buses — smaller vehicles which carry between 14 and 18 passengers — the grant will cover necessary charging equipment and facility improvements for the Tri-Valley Transit region operating in Addison, Orange and Northern Windsor counties.
“I’m very proud of the record amount of funding my Administration has proposed to combat climate change, and electrifying our transportation sector is a key component of our strategy,” Gov. Phil Scott said in a press release.
Public Transit Manager Ross MacDonald said he expects the new e-buses to hit the streets between July 2022 and June 2023. They will join two large e-buses already in operation in Burlington, as well as four to six coming in the next couple of months, and more within the next year.
In total, the state has received funding for 18 e-buses, including more than $7 million in “Low and No Emissions” grant program awards and more than $1.25 million in state and local fund-matching required by the program. The agency also received funds for two e-buses from the Volkswagen Mitigation Trust funds, MacDonald said.
Before Covid-19, Vermonters averaged between 15,000 and 16,000 bus trips a day and 5 million trips a year on the fleet’s more than 420 buses, most of which run on internal combustion engines and diesel fuel, MacDonald said.
A 2016 report from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation found that almost 45% of the state’s emissions currently come from transportation, primarily cars and trucks.
“The Low and No Emissions grant program has been critical to AOT’s electrification plans,” MacDonald said in the press release. “Over the last several years, these grant awards have enabled us to invest in electric public vehicles and infrastructure, while gaining a better understanding of the financial and operational requirements needed to develop a fully electric fleet.”
E-buses can cost anywhere from 30% of the cost of diesel buses to more than double their price tag. While cheaper fuel and lower maintenance costs reduce the gap over the lifecycle of a bus, they do not totally close it, MacDonald said.
The agency has also struggled to find e-buses with the range and specifications necessary to operate across Vermont’s hilly landscape and through the cold winters, he said. While the larger buses used in Burlington have the range and hours necessary to replace the diesel buses, the smaller cutaways cannot match their diesel counterparts in terms of miles or hours.
“It’s not that they need to perform as well as the diesel. They just need to perform as well as the diesel does on the routes that we need,” MacDonald said in an interview with VTDigger. “We are seeing issues where we’re not able to put these cutaways on some of our routes because the specifications just won’t allow it to do the full route.”
Until better alternatives are developed, converting the fleet to electric buses would require splitting some routes in half and using diesel buses while the electric vehicles charge, MacDonald said.
The Agency of Transportation is in the midst of creating an electrification plan examining the viability of buying only electric buses in the future. MacDonald said the plan will be ready by the end of the year, in time for the next legislative session.
