Central Arkansas residents could soon catch a ride on a new battery-powered electric vehicle as part of their daily commute.
Rock Region Metro, the area’s public transit agency, held a formal “plugging in” ceremony Tuesday commemorating their first five battery-electric buses entering service.
The agency’s CEO Justin Avery said they’ll be joining Metro’s existing fleet of vehicles powered by compressed natural gas.
“Now, with these five electric buses that we have that are replacing our last five diesel buses in our fleet, this means we have completed our transition away from diesel fuel much earlier than anticipated,” Avery said. “In fact, over a year-and-a-half earlier than we expected.”
The 40-foot buses, made by California-based Proterra, were primarily funded by a roughly $5 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration. Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. says it’s in line with his goal to transition city operations to 100% clean energy by the end of the decade.
“We’ve set on a course of the Renew 2030 plan; how we focus on more clean energy, how we focus on more sustainability and how we focus on more electric vehicles,” Scott said. “What you all are doing is in line with that vision on how we take our city, how we take our region to the next level as it relates to sustainability but also lessening the carbon footprint.”
Also present at Tuesday’s event were Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde and North Little Rock Mayor Terry Hartwick, who led the crowd in a rousing rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus.”
Avery said Rock Region Metro will hold off on adding more electric vehicles to their fleet for now, but said more of the “scalable technology” could be coming in the future.
“Like many business plans that have been put into place as we learn more about climate change, we are relying on diversification; in this case, having a mixed fleet for the foreseeable future as we learn more about this ever-changing EV landscape so that we can help combat climate change and reduce the public health impacts from air pollution, especially in our most vulnerable populations,” he said.
The five new battery-electric buses are expected to enter service on some of Rock Region Metro’s most heavily-trafficked routes in the next few weeks. The vehicles have an operating range of 220 to 340 miles.
