GoTriangle CEO: Time is right for electric buses in the Triangle
(Triangle Business Journal, Friday, June 30, 2017)
If all goes as planned, seven electric buses will be traversing the Triangle by 2019.
That’s if the Federal Transit Administration approves a grant application that regional transportation authority GoTriangle submitted jointly with GoRaleigh, GoCary and Chapel Hill Transit this week.
The buses, the first electric vehicles in GoTriangle’s fleet, would be purchased from Proterra, which houses its east coast manufacturing operation in South Carolina. Its 40-foot buses cost about $980,000 each, including charging stations and needed equipment.
According to GoTriangle, that’s twice the cost of a diesel bus. But the Proterra vehicles are expected to be less expensive to operate. GoTriangle estimates the buses to get a 21.4 miles per gallon-equivalent at 19 cents per mile. Diesel buses, by comparison, get 3.86 miles per gallon, at 84 cents a mile. It’s math that translates to a bus that costs between $250,000 and $400,000 less to operate over its lifetime.
The buses – like the rest of GoTriangle’s fleet – will be WiFi connected, says GoTriangle General Manager Jeff Mann. The real difference to the customer experience will be the noise.
“They’ll be a lot quieter,” Mann predicts.
Mann says his agency has been looking into the possibility of deploying electric-powered technology for some time.
“Now the technology has evolved to the point where we believe it’s something that can really work for us,” he says, pointing to service range and lower-weight vehicles on the market today.
Specific routes haven’t been decided for the new buses. Mann says those decisions will be made in conjunction with Proterra, but he says Route 100, which hits Raleigh-Durham International Airport, N.C. State University and downtown Raleigh is a likely candidate.
The federal grant would front about half of the $6.8 million cost of the project and, if it’s awarded, Proterra has agreed to provide a $175,000 in-kind donation.
Joe Milazzo, executive director for the Regional Transportation Alliance business coalition, was among those who wrote letters of support for the grant. In a June 14 letter to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Milazzo writes that the Triangle “thrives on innovation and collaboration” and that the grant will “jump-start a shared effort to create a lower-emission regional transit system for our market while we construct five bus rapid transit corridors and complementary rail investments across our region during the next ten years.”
In an email Thursday, Milazzo says alternative fuel technologies make public transit more sustainable and effective. And investments in transit are what people want, he adds.
“The voters in all three core Triangle counties have voted via referenda for their new transit future,” he says. “New fuel technologies will help realize and accelerate that future by making it more attractive for both current and future users of transit – and more ridership yields more support and more accessibility to jobs and employment opportunities.”
Multiple entities wrote letters of support for the project, including Duke Energy, Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster, Southern Environmental Law Center and others.
The grant being applied for is called the Low or No Emission Competitive Grant Program and provides money so state and local governmental authorities can buy or lease zero-emission and low-emission transit buses. Under the FAST Act, $55 million per year is available until 2020.
The FTA makes its decision in September and, if the Triangle wins the award, Proterra expects to deliver the first bus by December of 2018.
The grant, combined with local transit money, would allow GoRaleigh, GoTriangle and Chapel Hill Transit to buy two buses each and GoCary one bus – allowing transit planners to move to lower-emission and more efficient transit vehicles.