Full fleet electrification expected by 2030
The city’s moving toward electrifying its school buses, dropping $7 million on making 20 of them run on batteries as Mayor Michelle Wu seeks to have the other 97.3% of them running on batteries by 2030.
“It is a significant investment,” Wu acknowledged when asked about the price. “But it’s an investment in our future. It’s an investment in our health. And it’s a cost savings over the long run.”
The city’s planning to roll out the 20 electrified buses for the coming school year, Wu announced Wednesday at Roxbury’s Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, where city bus mechanics will train kids and adults alike to work on the electric buses and other vehicles.
Officials said electrifying the buses costs $350,000 a pop, for a total of $7 million. This money is already budgeted from the schools’ operating budget and federal relief money, school officials said.
The 20 buses are just a small fraction — 2.7% — of Boston Public Schools’ 739 buses, which constitute 11% of the city’s municipal emissions, according to Wu’s office. The city has been working to switch them off of diesel and onto cleaner fuel.
Wu’s office said Wednesday’s announcement is “the first step toward full electrification of the school bus fleet by 2030.”
Wu’s office said the plan is to keep replacing first large buses and then smaller ones in the coming years. If all the buses cost $350,000 each to electrify, that’s a total of $258.6 million.
Wu did say when asked about the 20-bus announcement that the maintenance and fuel costs do balance the big up-front costs out.
It remains to be seen whether or not kids get to school any more reliably in these new buses. Every year, the district has a nightmarish time getting kids to class on time, given the fact that BPS students often attend schools that aren’t near them. Officials previously have said that the only district in the country that spends more per student on transportation is Buffalo, New York.