The Electric Bus Bust Mayhem Continues
In March, I had a field day posting some of the latest news that had come in on both the urban and school district E-bus experiments. Tragically for the tax dollars involved, and, in some cases, the health, comfort, and well-being of the kiddos on the buses, most were abysmal disappointments and many flat-out disasters.
There were mechanical issues galore, scary fires that thankfully erupted in unoccupied vehicles but consumed the fleet in some cases, and maintenance/parts problems arising from bankrupt bus manufacturers that seemed insurmountable.
Tellingly, data was also now available from some of the school districts that had first adopted the E-buses, and the promised affordability was nowhere to be found. This was causing considerable consternation.
...This is with the Naples (NY) School District running only two electric school buses, both of which had initially paid for by federal grants, etc.
36 cents per mile for diesel and $3.18 per mile for electric
As for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), now trying to determine if the public has received 'reliable, deployable transit assets capable of serving the communities for which they were funded,' investigators will have to look no further than the area of Miami-Dade, Florida, and the nearby metropolitan county of Broward.
In that March post, I had a short paragraph on it, the Xweet below about Broward's E-bus lot, and noted that, between them, the two had spent $126M on buses and on building charging stations.
The local TV station has recently been doing some sniffing around the bus lots and asking uncomfortable questions of city and county leaders in both areas. The dollar amounts associated are gobsmacking.
Ninety-six million dollars’ worth of electric buses sit idle across South Florida, some parked in a landfill, others lined up at the Homestead Air Reserve Base.
...Across South Florida, dozens of electric buses purchased with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars remain parked and out of service, more than a year after they were pulled from the road.
Right now, no one knows exactly what comes next.
In Miami-Dade, frustration is growing inside County Hall.
Roberto Gonzalez and Natalie Milian Orbis co-sponsored a resolution in January requiring the administration of Daniella Levine Cava to produce a detailed report outlining what went wrong with the county’s electric bus fleet and what the plan is moving forward.
The resolution gave the mayor 30 days to deliver that report.
That deadline has now come and gone.
No report has been publicly released.
“If these buses are not working efficiently, not out there saving the environment and not out there servicing the residents of Miami-Dade County, then we need to get that money back,” Gonzalez said.
Milian Orbis called the situation a red flag and said the county cannot afford to let millions of dollars sit idle without a plan.
For some reason, the Miami-Dade County mayor is reluctant to turn loose of her derelict buses, and she's got a loaded lot.
In Broward County, they're trying to work with the feds to just unload all of these worthless buses, but you can't fault them for not trying. They even bought E-buses from a different company.
...Thirty-one electric buses are currently sitting in a remote section of a landfill off U.S. 27, each one costing roughly $1.1 million.
Coree Cuff Lonergan said the buses “continued to fail” and described the situation as “a deep disappointment.”
“We absolutely did our best to keep the buses on the road,” she said.
She also revealed that problems are not limited to Proterra buses.
“We did take delivery of two additional buses from a different manufacturer and they do not work either,” she said.
I totally get the frustration. But, woof.
That's a lot of cha-ching rotting away.
...In Miami-Dade, the buses remain parked.
At the Homestead Air Reserve Base, rows of electric buses sit idle in what has become one of the most visible symbols of the problem. Sky 10 counted dozens of buses stored there.
Additional buses are stored at the Northeast Bus Facility near Miami Gardens Drive.
Together, they represent a significant public investment that is currently delivering no return.
Miami-Dade Transit confirms 69 Proterra buses were purchased at a cost of $61.8 million, including federal, state, and local surtax funding.
So there had been a divergence of opinions between the two counties. For whatever reason, the Miami-Dade approach was stalling until they formulated some sort of rescue plan. Maybe even swap for more E-buses, as the mayor seems to be a confirmed cultist. I haven't the first clue, and neither do some county commissioners, as they are getting pretty irate.
In Broward, they've been working with the feds on a plan to be done with the entire failed experiment and perhaps claw back some of the money they wasted.
...In Miami-Dade, commissioners are still waiting for a report that was due weeks ago.
In Broward, officials are waiting on the federal government before they can move forward with disposal or recovery.
Questions remain about the cost and reliability of electric transit fleets moving forward.
Miami Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez has raised concerns about the financial reality, saying electric buses can be far more expensive to operate than diesel models. “It takes much more money to operate the electric one as opposed to the diesel one,” he said.
Still, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is standing by the county’s commitment to electrification. She said Miami-Dade plans to continue moving forward with electric buses, adding that she believes electric vehicles remain the future despite the current setbacks.
Levine Cava said a detailed report on the county’s electric bus fleet will be released to commissioners in the near future.
But now there's been a new wrinkle that throws all the planning into chaos. Everyone knows that federal largesse, aka 'grant money,' is never free, and it turns out that's true even if it was as green as the stripe on a rainbow unicorn's mane.
This UH-OH is putting the 'P' in panic, but again, the two counties are looking at handling it differently. The bottom line is that the terms of the grant used to purchase the bus specified that the bus had to remain in service for 12 years or 500,000 miles, or the grant money (or a proportion thereof) had to be returned.
Local 10 News has learned that because federal grant money funded a significant portion of the electric bus fleets in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, there are federal guidelines tied to how long those buses are expected to remain in service.
If the buses are taken out of service early, counties may have to repay a portion of that federal funding.
That possibility is now driving decisions in both counties in very different ways.
In Broward County, transit officials have formally asked the Federal Transit Administration for forgiveness in an effort to avoid paying that money back.
“And so one of the things that we are, the application that we submitted to the FTA is for us to be able to get forgiveness from them so that we do not have to reimburse them for the funds that they have provided to us and also to be able to dispose of them,” said Coree Cuff Lonergan, CEO and general manager of Broward County Transit.
In Miami-Dade County, leaders are taking a different approach.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is still trying to find a way to get the buses back on the road.
“We are still hopeful we can still put them into service. The company that is the successor company is not able to give us the level of service we need,” she said.
Broward is basically throwing itself on the mercy of the federal government, while the dewy-eyed mayor of Miami-Dade wants to try scrounging up Proterra parts from other cities in the same exact busted E-bus boat across the country (and there are plenty of those, believe you me). Good luck, girlfriend.
I think they need to scrounge up a new mayor, but that's just me.
The scramble is on.
And that's my update...so far.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment