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by cnntth
1296 days ago
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Transit companies get shafted in municipal budgets politically. Increasing ridership by increasing frequency (more drivers / more cheap diesel or lng buses) is a better investment of limited budgets than electrification. But also sometimes transit agencies just do dumb things (see, Boston de-electrifying a few bus lines). |
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It's mostly because it takes 10-20 years to transition a transit agency to ZEBs. Many agencies in the US are in the process of doing this. The timeline is due to things like:
- FTA monies used to purchase existing ICEBs require vehicles to be retained for their "useful life", which is often 12 years/500k miles;
- Retrofits or rebuilds of bus garages take many years and hundreds of millions of dollars. The timeline is dependent on design + construction + utility requests (which alone can sometimes take 2-3 years);
- Budgets!
Along with that comes refactoring service, due to so many vehicle service blocks not being compatible with the ranges of current batter-electric bus technology.