NEWS

Electric buses will soon join the fleet in Fayetteville in an effort to reduce emissions

Abby Church
The Fayetteville Observer

The Fayetteville Area System of Transit will soon add electric buses to its fleet.

The City Council approved a motion March 8 to approve FAST's request to apply for a grant for electric buses through the Low or No Emissions Program, run by the Federal Transit Administration.

The program's purpose is to provide funding to state and local governments so they can transition their fleets to ones that put off fewer emissions by either purchasing or leasing new buses.

In the request submitted to the council, transit director Randy Hume asked that they support a request for $2,185,350 from the FTA. Another portion of the funding, $385,650, they asked to be matched locally for a total of $2,571,000 in funding.

Fayetteville Area System of Transit is applying for funding for three 40-foot electric buses from Proterra.

With the money, transit is looking to replace three of its 35-foot diesel buses for 40-foot electric ones from California-based bus company Proterra, Hume said in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon. Proterra also has an office in Greenville.

Of FAST's 30 buses, none are electric, Hume said. According to the request, the city was given $255,500 of funding for two other Proterra buses from the Volkswagen Settlement. Following Clean Air Act violations in 2015, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality said Volkswagen's settlement agreements allocated money nationally to "resolve matters related to the violations." The two buses should join the fleet in the next 12-15 months, Hume said.

As the industry moves toward incorporating more electric buses into fleets nationwide in a push to reduce emissions, Hume said there's been discussion about the possibility of using all zero-emission buses by 2050. He doesn't know if that'll happen, he said, but that FAST wanted to make the switch locally.

In addition to decreasing emissions in the city, Hume guessed that the three buses FAST is looking at getting will save about $40,000 each in fuel costs per year and another $20,000-$30,000 a year per bus in maintenance.

Hume said each electric bus runs at around $850,000. A diesel bus costs a little more than $500,000. 

FAST's 2020 application to the program wasn't approved due to the program's competitive nature, Hume said.

According to the request, the application is due April 12 and if accepted, transit anticipates the funding for the buses will be granted in spring 2022.

Government watchdog reporter Abby Church can be reached at achurch@gannett.com.

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