King County Metro moves towards zero-emissions fleet with big electric bus purchase

On Jan­u­ary 30th, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine announced an agree­ment to buy forty bat­tery-elec­tric bus­es, with an option for eighty more.

The coun­ty has been leas­ing a small num­ber of elec­tric bus­es from three sep­a­rate com­pa­nies since 2018, main­ly to gath­er infor­ma­tion on their reli­a­bil­i­ty and pro­vide feed­back to the indus­try. The bus­es the coun­ty is pur­chas­ing, from man­u­fac­tur­er New Fly­er, are val­ued at between $925,000 and $1.3 mil­lion each.

Fund­ing for the ini­tial $50 mil­lion pur­chase has been cov­ered in part by grants from the Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tion and the state Depart­ment of Ecology.

Metro is aim­ing to tran­si­tion to an all-elec­tric fleet by 2040, first announc­ing the plan back in 2017. Both 40′ and 60′ artic­u­lat­ed mod­els are cur­rent­ly being tested.

After a few years of test­ing, Metro now has more infor­ma­tion about how the brand-new bat­tery-elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy react to the unique ter­rain, weath­er, and traf­fic of our region. It is encour­ag­ing to see that the agency felt com­fort­able enough to pro­ceed to a first pur­chase order on-time, going by the time­line set forth at the estab­lish­ment of the program.

The first forty bus­es will be six­ty-foot artic­u­lat­ed bus­es (the longer bus­es we see on the roads with two halves con­nect­ed by a cen­tral node).

If the coun­ty decides to buy more, twen­ty can be artic­u­lat­ed while the remain­ing six­ty will be forty foot sin­gle-sec­tion buses.

Elec­tric bat­tery pow­ered bus­es have so far been test­ed sole­ly on the East­side, since cov­er­age areas are lim­it­ed by where charg­ing infra­struc­ture is.

Metro cur­rent­ly has charg­ing infra­struc­ture at two loca­tions: the East Base locat­ed in the new Spring Dis­trict and at East­gate Park & Ride.

Routes 226 and 241 have seen elec­tric bus ser­vice over the last few years. The ini­tial forty artic­u­lat­ed bus­es are also like­ly to begin ser­vic­ing the East­side, espe­cial­ly on com­muter routes from East­gate head­ing into Seattle.

Infra­struc­ture to accom­mo­date an elec­tric fleet is the next step in tran­si­tion­ing to an all-elec­tric fleet, since the cur­rent East­side-heavy set­up lim­its the area that bat­tery-elec­tric bus­es can cov­er. Facil­i­ties are being built at the South Base in Tuk­wila for up to one hun­dred and twen­ty-five buses.

The two hun­dred and fifty addi­tion­al bus­es that Metro plans to obtain by 2025 will be housed at a new annex adja­cent to the exist­ing South Base.

The bat­tery-elec­tric fleet is not the only ini­tia­tive that Metro has in place to reduce its car­bon foot­print. The agency has one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-four elec­tric trol­ley­bus­es in its fleet, using over­head wires for power.

The wires cur­rent­ly are con­cen­trat­ed through­out Down­town, Capi­tol Hill, First Hill, and Queen Anne. Branch­es extend as far as the Rainier Val­ley and Bal­lard, but the obvi­ous lim­i­ta­tion to the elec­tric trol­ley­bus­es is the exten­sive fixed infra­struc­ture required before ser­vice can begin in an area.

Trol­ley­bus­es also do not have bat­ter­ies, which are a key engi­neer­ing chal­lenge for man­u­fac­tur­ers in terms of dura­bil­i­ty and liability.

The new bat­tery-elec­tric fleet is a promis­ing step to reduce the pol­lu­tive foot­print of trans­porta­tion through­out our region. You can see the new bus­es in action on King Coun­ty TV’s Face­book page. They will hit the roads for gen­er­al use by 2021.