Washington DC starts 1st phase of e-bus orders

In the USA, Washington DC’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has just ordered five 40-foot electric buses from Nova Bus and five from New Flyer. The purchase is part of the WMATA plan to decarbonise its bus fleets by 2042 fully.

++ This article has been updated; please continue reading below. ++

Metro’s plan to speed up its transition off fossil fuelled buses has been tightened and is now to be three years sooner than previously planned.

The agency will be starting from scratch with a 12-bus pilot program. Here, the buses on order will join two 60-foot articulated electric buses that the agency says will also be part of its first phase procurement.

Metro says it will open its first electric bus garage at Northern in 2027 to accommodate the new buses. Five of nine Metro garages should be ready for zero-emission buses by 2031 and the remaining by 2041.

Metro says it will initially deploy battery-electric buses, while it says that hydrogen fuel cell technology will continue to be evaluated as the technology evolves. The public transport provider has said it will “end purchases of diesel buses this year and phase out purchases of non-zero-emission buses by 2030.”

Update 31 August 2023

Washington’s transit authority, WMATA, has received 104 million dollars from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to progress its electrification program. The latest capital is to convert the Cinder Bed Road Bus Garage in DC to exclusively serve battery-electric buses.

The Low or No Emission Vehicle grant will help Metro achieve its accelerated timeline to transition nine bus garages and nearly 1,600 buses to zero-emission by 2042—the interim target of five garages turning into EV depots by 2031.

In addition to Cinder Bed Road, Metro’s new Northern and Bladensburg bus garages are being built to support zero-emission buses, as will the new Western Bus Garage. Bladensburg Bus Garage will support approximately 150 BEB.

WMATA has not mentioned the charging infrastructure partner or type of buses but says it is working with local utilities to secure electricity supply at the garages.

smartcitiesdive.com, wmata.com, wmata.com (update Aug ’23)