Mayors across North American are calling Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson to find out how things are going now that Edmonton is home to 21 battery-electric buses which will hit the roads starting in August.
Edmonton Transit ordered 40 electric buses from Proterra, which built, wrapped and painted them in South Carolina.
The buses run off long-range batteries, which are powered using electricity from overhead charging stations in the garage when they’re not in use. Edmonton is one of the first cities in North America to have this type of charging technology.
The buses can travel up to 350 km on a single charge and the batteries work in all weather conditions.
Iveson said “It’s going to be extraordinary for our operators and for the public to be on a really quiet, comfortable, super high-efficient bus.” He says the electric buses will be cheaper in the long run.
“They do cost more to buy but they’re about 30 per cent more efficient to operate. And at a time where we’re all sort of scratching our heads to make sure that all civic expenditures — particularly transit — are as efficient as possible and as focused as possible, these super-efficient buses will help us long into the future, control the cost of delivering service.”
The mayor said “When you’re on the bus it’s quieter, but also when the bus is going by — for people on the sidewalk, people on patios, people in residential neighbourhoods — the bus will have much lower impact in terms of what people hear. And of course, there’s no tail pipe.”
wow, doesn’t even require a shovel, or greedy “anchors” to envision it. I bet the call with Fred was rather brief.