Leading the Charge to Zero-Emission Transit

January 13, 2025

What does it take to electrify a transit fleet? In this episode of Stop Requested, Levi McCollum and Christian Londono explain the challenges and benefits of zero-emission buses. Learn about the key technologies — from battery-electric to hydrogen fuel cells — and why transit agencies are racing to secure funding and develop Zero Emission Transition Plans. They also cover practical tips for agencies looking to start the shift, including infrastructure planning, working with power providers, and understanding the true costs of going electric.

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Episode Transcript

00:00 Stop Requested.

00:02 Levi McCollum: Welcome to Stop Requested, the podcast where we discuss everything transit. I’m your co host, Levi McCollum, product manager at ETA Transit.

00:11 Christian Londono: And I’m your co host, Christian Londono, Senior customer Success Manager at ETA Transit.

00:20 Levi McCollum: Hey Christian, how are you doing today?

00:23 Christian Londono: Doing great, Levi. How about you?

00:25 Levi McCollum: Yeah, yeah, doing very well and I’m super excited about this episode for Stop Requested. This is one that I know you have a lot of experience with and it’s a hot topic in the public transit industry: zero emission buses. This is a good one.

00:41 Christian Londono: Oh yeah, Great, great topic. 100% a hot topic. Not just over the last couple of years, but it’s been now a few years that we talk about zero emission vehicles and we hear about, you know, implementations around the country. Looking forward to the conversation, Levi.

00:59 Levi McCollum: Exactly. Yeah, this is going to be a good one. So listen in, listen closely, rewind if you need to. If you’re, if you’re listening in, could you explain to me what is zero emission vehicles or a zero emission fleet as compared to just say, you know, your traditional fleet? Maybe it’s diesel or even some of these other technologies that are thrown around, such as hydrogen and so on. How do you classify it?

01:29 Christian Londono: So first of all, as you know, Levi, I have a little bit of experience in this field just because I’ve led the fleet electrification project for Palm Tran for different years building up their zero emissions transition plan. But I do want to put out there. I’m not an expert, but I will share from, from what I know. So talking about the, the definition for zero emissions vehicles or zero emission fleet, it’s pretty much, you know, that piece of, of no emissions, no carbon emissions. So the whole goal is to be greener, no emissions that might be impacting the environment. And pretty much traditionally a lot of the fleets around the world, they are, you know, they have fossil fuels, so they’re, you know, burning diesel or gasoline and of course they have those carbon emissions. And what we’re aiming here is to get to that goal, to, you know, transition our fleets to zero emissions and of course have that positive impact in our environment.

02:43 Levi McCollum: Excellent. So what would you say are the most common or maybe the most popular type of zero emission vehicle right now?

02:54 Christian Londono: I think the quick answer is battery electric vehicles. You know, Tesla has made it very popular for people to start transitioning from gas, gasoline vehicles to electric vehicles. And we’re seeing the same in the public transit sector as well. But then you also have compressed natural gas, you have fuel cell hydrogen. So there’s other Technologies, and I would say those are ranked very closely. The leading one by far is battery electric vehicles.

03:32 Levi McCollum: Yeah. So you mentioned that Tesla made it cool to have an electric vehicle. I think there was some carryover, a spillover perhaps to Proterra. Right. Proterra, with their branding and the way that they were able to penetrate the market, they made electric buses cool in a lot of ways, in my mind. Would you agree?

03:55 Christian Londono: I think so. And they really push the boundaries of electric vehicles in terms of range and, you know, savings. And we’ll talk about more about, you know, some of those things. And it’s very similar to the claim that a lot of the other electric vehicle manufacturers in the US Make. Proterra was claiming also to provide the entire ecosystem, which is something that agents are looking at like they need assistance not just with the bus. The bus is a very important piece, of course. And when we think about zero emissions or battery electric buses, then we’re thinking immediately about the bus. So I’ll buy the bus. But being able to transition is so much more than just the bus. And, you know, I’m looking forward to getting to that. But yeah, Proterra did have a really good impact in terms of helping more agencies consider that transition and even start the transition. Many agencies started with Proterra, their journey to zero emissions.

04:55 Levi McCollum: Right. Well, you mentioned that there are some ancillary systems that need to go along with the bus. You know, of course, there’s the bus and the batteries. Right. Those are the big ones. What else might be included? If I’m a planner or if I’m an operations person at a transit agency, how should I be thinking about electrifying my fleet or moving to zero emissions?

05:18 Christian Londono: Well, Levi, I will tell you, I’ve attended a lot of these zero emissions sessions at different conferences over the last four years. And I think a lot of our listeners would agree that almost every time they travel to a conference, a transit conference, there are sessions about electric vehicles or zero emissions or, you know, best practices. But I would say in what I’ve heard and learned is one of the main things or main considerations is working with the provider for the power. So that will be your power company. You know, sometimes it’s the city, sometimes it’s the state, sometimes, you know, is a big agency, it’s a small agency. But whoever will be delivering the power to your facility, it’s one of the first considerations you have to make because without power, then the rest of the project is not going to be able to succeed.

06:17 Levi McCollum: Right. That’s a really good point.

06:19 Christian Londono: Yeah. And of course then again we said, okay, we think about the bus and the batteries. That’s what comes to mind in terms of battery electric vehicles. So we talk about that consideration of the power company. But then there’s also additional infrastructure like you know, you have to have charging stations, you have to have maintenance adequations to your facility so you can maintain better electric vehicles. You might need to do in route charging or some odd, some other adequations to your facilities, you know, bus stops or bus stations to be able to support a battery electric transition.

07:02 Levi McCollum: Yeah, all really good points and I think that our listeners probably are aware of that. But if not, you know, you have to think holistically about supporting this type of system. It is a real transition. And in fact, you know, the federal government, the FTA, they, they want you to have a zero emission fleet transition plan. And I know that you were partly responsible or at least led that effort over at Palm Tran. Can you give our listeners any insight to how do you get up and running? Like if I wanted to apply for a grant and get a loan o grant, what do I have to do in order to be considered?

07:41 Christian Londono: Yeah, it is my understanding that is a requirement is that requirement to have zero emissions transmission plan. So you have to build that plan before you actually apply for funding. And it makes sense because the plan itself and pretty much the elements that you have to include within that zero emissions transition plan is provided by the fda. So they’re pretty much telling you you have to have a zero emissions transition plan where, which should include and they give you the list and for the most part is an exercise of driving awareness of everything that you have to have in place for you to effectively use those funds and put in place zero emissions plan. So they have you thinking about workforce. Do you have to write down evaluation of different technologies in implications to service? You know, so how much of your fleet could you run today with battery electric vehicles? What’s going to be your charging strategy? Are you going to be in deep or only charging? Are you going to do in route charging? So all those type of things you have to think about because the idea is that you don’t apply for money and then you buy an electric bus and then now you have challenges putting it out there. You know, like the, the human resources component is so important, the training. A lot of people have to be retrained. Levi, you know, you’re talking about and I’m going to ask you just to give me your thought about the planning portion of it planning the service. But in terms of the operations, you know, the utility personnel, the mechanics, the bus operators, they all have to be training this technology in order for that project to be effective. But I’m going to pass it to you now to talk about the planning portion and the service. What do you think are the implications and things that agencies have to keep in mind? And by the way, this is part of what’s in the zero emissions transition plan, the implications for the service and the planning of the service. But could you tell me what comes to your mind? What do you know about the implications to planning the service out there?

09:51 Levi McCollum: Yeah, well, I haven’t personally had the opportunity and experience to plan for an electric fleet. I know that many of our colleagues in the South Florida area have and I’ve talked to several of them. I’ve read some of the literature about it. I think the big one is the range anxiety. As with your personal vehicles, you don’t know how far this new type of service this new vehicle is going to be able to provide. So that range can be a potential problem. Right. When you compare it to a diesel bus that may fuel up in the morning and be able to run its entire block throughout the day without any sort of recharging, there’s no fill up. Right. It just runs. And that’s what we know. There’s a lot of comfort in that. The downside perhaps with the electric vehicles or zero emission vehicles more generally would be that they don’t go as far, they don’t last as long with a charge. So you have to have either more vehicles to be able to supplement your fleet, which that really adds up, especially when there are electric vehicles that can be 2x the cost of a more traditional diesel bus or you invest a lot in infrastructure. So that could be charging at the depot, like you mentioned. It could be in route charging where there are certain stations that have charging that’s embedded within the ground. All of that needs to be considered. And you can’t just say, okay, now we have electric vehicles, let’s put them out on the road. No, it will not work that way or you’re going to have some very upset operators and passengers because of the shortsightedness. So you can’t have a myopic view with this. And I know that that zero emission transition plan is there in place to be able to get agencies to think ahead. Right. But you also have to consider, you know, what would you do with the batteries after the fact? There are some logistical concerns, you know, recycling concerns after the vehicle has reached its useful life, or at least the battery has reached its useful life. So, you know, maybe that doesn’t speak to the more operational planning, but the maintenance planning that you have to consider, what five years down the road, 10 years down the road looks like Anything I missed there, Christian?

12:34 Christian Londono: No, I mean that was very complete. I think that like we said in terms of the zero emissions transition plan, the idea is that you are evaluating each one of these components of a transition to zero emissions and then you’re thinking, okay, what are we going to do as an agency and what can we do to support the transition? Transition. Right. Like one of the things is, okay, how many of our routes and you know, our blocks we could electrify today and that could be 10%. And then if you have challenges for adding infrastructure because you don’t own a lot of the facilities, you know, is very expensive, you’re looking at also how much can you do within the funds that you have and the ones that you’re applying for. So there’s, there’s a lot of variables here. But, but I think those, you know, are very important when it’s coming. When it comes to the service and the transition, you want to try to mitigate or minimize the impact to your riders, you know, as much as possible. Because we’re also trying to gain ridership and make sure that, you know, the transit is working for the community and we just don’t want to start creating, you know, negative, you know, implications for the riders just because we’re transitioning to electric buses. So, you know, those components are very important, you know, to think about as part of this. And the other piece is the economic considerations, right? Like we’re talking about costs. So when you’re identifying that you have long routes that you know your range is a constraint and then in order to, you know, put that electrify that given route or segment, you have to put in route charging. In route charging that could be, you know, over a million dollars a pop. Then you’re looking at electric vehicles and electric bus, they’re running about, you know, 1.2, $1.3 million compared to a diesel vehicle, brand new, you’re buying for about 750. So 100. Looking at those economic implications and what can you do where you’re looking at low hanging fruits too? Because there’s also, you know, what I’ve seen is a lot of agencies talk about electrifying and, or zero emissions and they just talk about it and talk about it and there’s no pilots. There’s no first steps and I think that to start making some progress in the US in this industry and towards zero emissions and we can talk later about what’s happening around the world in other countries, but my opinion is that the US is very far behind and it’s because we’re hesitating and we’re not going after low hanging fruits and I think we have to start there. And part of that zero emissions transition plan is for agencies to identify the low hanging fruits. Where can they start first and start thinking about strategies to address the portion that seems a little bit more challenging to transition.

15:39 Levi McCollum: Yeah, a lot of really good points there. I want to bring up something that you mentioned a couple minutes ago about the potential negative impacts on the passenger. You know, I know that we had the, the potential here to slide back on our goals for frequency. Let’s say if for example, you’re running a 20 minute headway route right now with a diesel bus and you try to put the same number of electric vehicles out on that same route, you know, you might have to slide back to a 30 minute or, or worse headway. You know, are there any actual benefits then to the passenger that you know they’re going to see that. Well, if you, if you were to slide back to you know, a 30 minute headway or you know, hopefully, fingers crossed, you get enough, you have enough resources to be able to get the, the 20 minute headway that you had previously. What other types of benefits are the passengers going to see?

16:46 Christian Londono: So I think the, the, some of the benefits that I heard, you know, in regards of the, the, the benefits for passengers is that the ride is smooth and a lot of the drivers say the same. You know, there’s no transmission, there’s no switching gears. So sometimes the bus, when you know, switching gears, I don’t know, you know, you, you can imagine or you know, picture this in your head riding on a diesel, diesel bus and it’s taking off and gaining speed and you can feel as the, as the bus is switch switching gears, you know, like go to the next one, keeps going and then you know, you hear that, that transition. But it’s, it’s, it’s jerky sometimes, right with the, you know, with the electric propulsion and not having transmission is smooth, there’s less vibration on the vehicle, there’s less noise. So all that accounts for the rider like a better riding experience. You know, people don’t, cannot tell that the vehicle is on. You know, when you’re an electric bus, the bus is on ready to go and there’s no noise, it’s completely quiet. So, you know, this, those are some of the benefits for the riders. This is a cleaner ride and, and then not having emissions. There was a study done and, and I cannot recall the specifics statistics about kids around school buses and you know, all the emissions and the implications that I might have to kids that have asthma or these conditions and just the quality of the air and then the potential benefits of transitioning to electric vehicles where they’re not exposed to any of those emissions. So I would translate that into public transit as well and think about a lot of the riders as they’re approaching the bus, getting off the bus. There’s no fumes, there’s no, you know, emissions out there that they might be breathing. So that, that’s another benefit for the riders.

18:37 Levi McCollum: Yeah, a lot of positive benefits to go around. And I think that speaks to partly why transit agencies are wanting to make this, this move. Right. This is a big transition and fortunately a lot of agencies in the US are, are seeing the, the positive impact that electric vehicles are having. Others maybe are getting a little FOMO and they’re trying to get in now. In fact, of the 117 funded projects for this latest bus and bus facilities program, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with that. I know that several of our listeners will be as well. But nearly 80% of those buses in the 117 funded projects will be run on zero and low emission technology. So it shows that agencies are moving this way. I mean, this is where personal vehicles are moving as well. So, you know, we anticipate seeing much more of this in the future. I think one thing that could hamper us a little bit in this effort though, just the limited number of manufacturers that are producing buses and specifically electric buses, you know, the lead time to be able to get an electric bus. What is it now, Christian? I’m, you’re probably more familiar with this.

19:53 Christian Londono: Than I am from what I heard from, you know, colleagues in the industry just placing orders and you know, the conversations that I had with manufacturers, we’re looking at about a year and a half. Sometimes they would say 12 months, 14 months. But reality is they’re sitting about a year and a half delivery. You know, being able to place your order soon is, is critical if you want to have those vehicles in your facility soon enough. But a lot of the times, if it’s the first project, you know, it’s not a bad thing that the vehicle takes that amount of time because you, you also need some time to Train personnel to, you know, get your infrastructure. So maybe you’re going to have some chargers in, in your facility, you’re going to have some equipment, some tooling for your technicians and, and of course that training, training for the bus operators. So maybe, you know, it’s not that bad, year and a half. Of course, it affects more agencies that are already, you know, ready transition. They already have electric vehicles and they’re now retiring diesel buses and replacing with electric and then now they’re taking that long to arrive. I don’t know if that’s a, you know, making the decision to only order electric harder for some agencies where because of that lead time they might be saying like, well, you know what, we have to order 10 buses just to, you know, keep our fleet updated. Let’s order six electric and another four diesel just because those come quicker. I don’t know if there’s some of that out there. I hope that’s not the case. But I, I, you know, the lead time, what, from what I know is sitting at about year, year and a half.

21:42 Levi McCollum: Yeah, well, I mean, in the end, as a transit operator, you have to have the buses, right? So if you can’t get the electric buses, then you might have to go back to, you know, maybe a mixed fleet, having some diesel buses.

21:57 Christian Londono: Yeah. Although a lot of agencies, Levi, and I don’t know if you heard the same or I’m interested to know what you’ve heard about their setting a goal and part of the zero emissions transition plan. And I might be mistaken on this one, but from what I recall, you also have to state a goal which is based on your assessment, your evaluation, you know, what’s the goal you’re setting? 25%, you know, zero emissions by 2030 or whatever goal you’re setting, you know, so, so it’s important to be able to identify what’s that goal. Right. But a lot of agencies too are making a drastic goal, which is we’re going to be 100 zero emissions and we’re, we’re not ordering any more diesel vehicle. We’re only ordering zero emissions, whichever technology it is. But, you know, even sometimes hybrids, they, you know, they go under that, but they’re not ordering any more diesel vehicles, like diesel only at all. Have you heard about agencies making a goal like that or, you know, what are your thoughts about that?

23:06 Levi McCollum: Yeah, certainly. And I think that at least in California, right, where it’s coming down from the state and they’re saying, well, all vehicles have to be zero emission by, I believe it’s 2035, those agencies are making very concerted efforts to transition their fleet. So I don’t know specifically about some of those larger agencies like LA county and a few others, but there are some, like Antelope Valley Transit Authority, they were the first to be 100% electrified fleet. And my understanding after speaking with an individual there early last year that that’s all they plan on buying. It is electric vehicles through and through that they’re going to have in their fleet. So you’re right, some agencies are much more focused on the zero emission effort than others and I think a lot of that is out on the west coast.

24:05 Christian Londono: Yeah, the political support is very important. I mean even with the last, you know, administration, there’s been a lot of push for zero emissions which comes with policy. There’s also a, you know, education and there’s also funding. Right. So all these things get lined up for the right environment for agencies to start taking these steps. And it’s very important because even, you know, small agencies or mid sized agencies, sometimes this, these goals of transition to zero emissions come from their local government where the, the county or the state or sometimes the city a makes a pledge to meet zero emissions goals. And, and then they set one of these goals on the agency. So they tell the, the executive director of that agency, the city has this goal for zero emissions. And, and you have to find out, you know, work backwards. So if by 2030 we’re zero emissions, what do you have to do? You know, what’s your plan to get us there? And then when they go into these boards presenting, you know, going after grants and, and being AG transition, then you know, those boards might be more supportive because that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re, they’re setting a goal that is aggressive to transition at the same grade agencies might be trying to start, you know, dipping their toast into zero emissions. Or maybe battery electric, let me do battery electric. We want to do 5 buses, 10 buses as a pilot, we want to start it. And then sometimes the resistance by those local, you know, governments and policymakers and they’re like, oh, you know, but battery is expensive, but what if that explodes? Or you know, this is a fab, this is not really going to stay, you know, we don’t want battery electric vehicles. So in those cases, you know, even if the agency and the staff within the agency looking at, you know, how the entire industry is transitioning, you know, we talk about zero emissions being a constant topic in every single transit conference in the country, but even though all that they don’t have the local conditions to be able to make headway towards electrification. That’s a very important point you made in terms of the support and the policy. What comes with the policy to support the transition?

26:38 Levi McCollum: Yeah, absolutely. So as we wrap up here in our first part of our zero emission talk next week, we, we will also talk about this, but in a more international sense. I want to give the listeners some takeaways here that if they’re maybe not one of those agencies that have received a low or no emissions grant and they don’t have a zero emission transition plan, what are some tips that you have to nudge them in the right direction? If they want to do this, then what do they need to do first?

27:16 Christian Londono: I would say one of the first steps, Levi, it’s really to complete your zero emissions transition plan. And a lot of the times agencies, in order to get theirs completed, they have to engage a consultant. I know a Palm Tran we engaged WSP, which they did phenomenal work on this. They have, you know, electrical engineers, they have professionals that only work on transitioning fleets to zero emission across the country and across industries, not even just for transit. So these folks are experts in what it takes to get there. And you know, of course looking at your funding and starting that conversation with your, with your provider for, you know, power in your community, that’s going to be very important as well. I know in certain communities, you know, the electrical provider is very eager to get these projects done. They also receive funding and opportunities to, you know, participate in these projects are something that they benefit from and of course is the opportunity for selling power for years to come. But I think those are the initial steps, Levi, is look at that zero emissions transition plan and start going, you know, item by item, answering those questions for your agency about the staff, the technology and then low hanging fruit, you know, where could we start first? What would be the easiest to start? The implementation of the transition and also, you know, talk to other folks in our industry. Right. Like some, those, some of those that already started their process and maybe they just got a fleet and even, you know, if I want to end with this one, Levi, I would suggest a technical visit to a peer agency. That’s something that is very much eye opening. And the beautiful thing about our agencies that transit agencies want to share with each other and they want to help each other out. So I think, you know, asking peer agency if you could bring your staff and learn about their electrification project, that will be a great place to start as well.

29:26 Levi McCollum: Yeah, that’s really phenomenal advice. Thanks, Christian, for providing that, and I hope that was beneficial to the listeners as well. So next week we will be back with another electrification or zero emission fleet talk where we’ll be discussing the international lay of the land. What does the US look like in comparison to Europe and China and some of these other areas of our globe that are also moving to zero emission vehicles. Please tune in to that one because that one’s going to be interesting to have some context, a little bit of comparison to our, you know, comparison to our, our peers across the globe. It’s going to be a good discussion.

30:13 Christian Londono: Thank you.

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Levi McCollum
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Christian Londono
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Jose Mostajo
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