City of Burlington Moves Closer Towards Electrification of Transit by Engaging with CUTRIC
Burlington City Council unanimously approved staff's recommendation to develop a Zero-Emission Bus Fleet Implementation and Rollout Plan by engaging with the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) and CUTZEB™ (CUTRIC's not-for-profit arm) to finalize the plan and will report back to Council in Q2 2023.Click here for the full staff report: TR-04-22 CUTRIC-CUTZEB Joint Procurement Initiative.
Over the past two years, Burlington Transit staff have worked with CUTRIC modeling our route network to analyze the potential opportunity for electrification of our fleet by participating in CUTRIC’s Pan-Canadian Electric Bus Pilot Demonstration Project Phase II.Staff did look into comparing the use of hydrogen as an alternative source of fuel but, for now, it has been deemed to be considerably more costly.The total cost of the Zero-Emission Bus Fleet Implementation and Rollout Plan is $92,500 plus HST -- the plan will use funds already received from the Provincial Gas Tax.CUTRIC will complete the Zero-Emission Bus Fleet Implementation and Rollout Plan, noting below the areas that the plan will include:
- Assessment of the current state;
- Evaluation of electrical power services;
- Review of operational goals and scenario development;
- Comparative analysis of available vehicles and charging systems;
- Infrastructure gap analysis and requirements identification; and
- Implementation planning and costing.
CUTZEB™ is planning to issue an RFP (a request for proposal) to procure electric buses and charging infrastructure in 2023. Once an award is made to the preferred vendors, then Burlington Transit would have the option to purchase this equipment through the joint procurement.As part of the 2024 Capital Budget, Burlington Transit is planning to request the purchase of four electric buses and the necessary infrastructure to replace four diesel buses that are due to be retired. This would allow Transit to launch a small pilot of electric buses in 2024 and bring us closer to achieving the goals we've set out in our City's Climate Action Plan.MY TAKE:This report is great news for our city and it's very exciting to see the possibility of electrification of our transit fleet within reach. We’re joining a joint procurement process to acquire electric buses as soon as 2024! In the meantime, we're authorizing a study to do an overview of our infrastructure needs to make this happen and determine where the charging stations will need to go.
RELATED LINK:
- Staff report: : TR-04-22 CUTRIC-CUTZEB Joint Procurement Initiative