Greening of the fleet: Steamship Authority acquires 3 electric buses, more to be added
The Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority received three electric buses that will provide shuttle service between its off-site parking lots in Hyannis and Falmouth to the Hyannis and Woods Hole terminals, respectively.
The buses are the first of many and represent an effort on the part of the Authority to transition its 28-bus fleet to electric, Steamship Authority general manager Robert Davis said Monday. Davis said four more electric buses are expected to arrive later this summer.
“By the end of the summer, we expect essentially 25% of our bus fleet to be electric at that point,” he said. “We realized that with our vessels and our bus fleet, we have a footprint, and we would like to lessen what our impact is on the environment.”
"The transportation sector is the highest greenhouse gas contributor in the region," Steven Tupper, Cape Cod Commission deputy director, said in an email. "We are pleased to see organizations like the Steamship Authority utilizing electric vehicles as a way to reduce GHGs (greenhouse gases)."
The buses were ordered in 2021 and cost about $3 million, according to the Steamship Authority, but due to pandemic-related supply chain issues, the manufacturing and delivery process was delayed until recently.
The Steamship Authority received two grants to offset the cost of what a traditional diesel bus would be, Davis said. The first grant came from the Volkswagen Settlement Grant Program, which was awarded by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, and the second was administered under the Federal Transit Administration’s Low or No-Emission Program.
“In addition to that, we've had to install charging systems that are in our parking lots, in maintenance and bus maintenance facilities so that we can charge these vehicles, and that was in addition to the purchase of the buses,” Davis said.
Despite the additional charging installations, Davis said the electric buses will cost less to operate overall.
“We expect to have a lower maintenance cost with them because it's an electric motor as opposed to a diesel engine,” he said. “So we do expect some savings in that regard.”
A different training program will be required for drivers, Davis said, due to the regenerative braking systems of these new electric buses. Regenerative braking uses energy that would normally be lost during braking and then uses it to recharge the vehicle’s battery.
“We will be providing training to our drivers on these systems,” Davis said. “I think we'll be able to get enough of the drivers trained here this summer (in order) to be able to operate them.”
Walker Armstrong reports on all things transportation and the Joint Base Cape Cod military base. Contact him at WArmstrong@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jd__walker.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Steamship Authority gets electric buses for Hyannis and Woods Hole
