Metro Transit testing electric buses for faster routes

Aiming to create a faster service on limited routes, Metro Transit is testing electric buses for its planned Twin Cities expansion.

With that in mind, officials with the regional transportation agency rode an electric bus up and down Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis on Monday. Transit officials say the new technology could serve as a midpoint between conventional buses and light rail trains.

"Over the course of the next decade, we're going to have a pretty aggressive build out of what we call arterial bus rapid transit lines on some of our heaviest used lines," said Brian Lamb, Metro Transit's general manager.

If purchased, electric buses would run along nearly a dozen major Twin Cities streets, like Snelling Avenue and West 7th Street in St. Paul and West Broadway and Lake Street in Minneapolis.

"They have a very defined end-to-end in this urban area," Lamb said. "And so what we were envisioning is to run clean power energy buses through this area, where they could get a recharge, if you will, on either end."

They would be used to create a faster service in limited areas, with few stops. As on trains, riders would pay before boarding.

One of the chief attributes of an electric bus is that it hardly makes any noise.

"I think where riders are really going to enjoy the electric bus is how quiet it is," said David Warren, an executive with New Flyer, the Winnipeg company that plans to manufacture the buses in Minnesota. "When you're inside of it, you don't get the same vibration. It's just a much more pleasant environment running around the city."

New Flyer contends electric buses will be a good fit for the limited service Metro Transit officials envision. But electric buses also could serve traditional bus routes.

"This has the ability to run more than 80 miles of continuous operation, five hours or more out on route," Warren said. "For every hour of operation of this bus, if we can charge six minutes in that hour period, we can keep this bus out continuously on the road, without having to come back to the depot."

The technology isn't cheap. Each 40-foot electric bus is expected to cost nearly twice the $450,000 cost of a traditional bus.

But an electric bus would save Metro Transit the cost of about 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel during a traditional 12-year bus lifespan. Electric buses also would not have tailpipes.

According to New Flyer, each electric bus would eliminate more than 100 tons of greenhouse gas emissions produced in a year by a diesel bus, even after taking into account the emissions created by generating the power to charge the buses.

Metro Transit officials say part of the testing will include comparisons with traditional diesel and diesel hybrid buses.

But New Flyer, which has bus plants in St. Cloud and Crookston, expects electric vehicles will be a winner.

"We see it taking off the same way the hybrid buses took off maybe 10-15 years ago," Warren said. "But I think, you know, within the next 10 years, 20 percent of the fleet being electric power is certainly very feasible, and it could, in certain applications, go well beyond that."

Two other manufactures will bring their buses to the Twin Cities in May.