Transport Board says electric buses worth it

by Marlon Madden

The Transport Board has been able to slash its maintenance costs by millions of dollars over one year by having the electric buses among its fleet, Chief Operations Officer Lynda Holder has reported.

Holder said the state-owned organization managed to significantly cut expenditure on fuel costs within the first year of having the first batch of electric buses in operation, when matched up against the expenditure on fossil fuel powered buses.

Giving a sneak peek into the savings, Holder said: “We ran some numbers from September 2020 to August 2021, with 35 electric buses on the road and 50 diesel buses, [and] our total expenditure if you are looking at maintenance . . . when you look at the fuel, for the electric buses we spent $1.9 million, for the diesel buses we spent $3.6 million.”

“When you look at the maintenance programme, we spent at that time $299, 000 plus for the electric buses. For the diesel buses, our maintenance was $7.4 million. We look at the tyres and fumes and so on, [and] for the electric buses we spent $182, 000 over that 12-month period. For the diesel buses we spent $326, 000,” she said.

“If you take those numbers and round them up, we would have spent $2.469 million on electric buses and on the diesel buses we would have spent $11.5 million. That is just to show you what the cost of maintenance was. So the savings we were able to generate in that area obviously helped to offset some of our ongoing costs of operation because there is a high cost for operation in public transport,” said Holder.

She explained that batteries for the electric buses did not have to be changed in the first year of their operation. She pointed out that the diesel buses were a lot older than the electric buses (the last one was purchased in 2006), and would therefore require more maintenance and that over $70, 000 was spent on batteries for the diesel buses.

She gave the insight recently while participating in the Electric Mobility Transition session of the Barbados Sustainable Energy Conference, which was held in conjunction with the 7th biennial Caribbean Sustainable Energy Forum.

Pointing out that the upfront cost for purchasing the electric buses, which is roughly $700, 000 each, was worth it given the savings, Holder stressed that the long-term savings would be considerable.

“The returns over the long term are expected to be significant and that will make a difference in not just our climate change issues but in our day-to-day operational issues. We are hoping that is where we will be heading towards,” said Holder.

“We also increased some training opportunities. When we got the buses, apart from training our staff, we worked with the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology and that would allow them exposure to the buses and open up other training opportunities for the public and, more importantly, for the younger persons coming up,” said Holder.

Some $45 million was set aside by the Government to purchase a total of 49 electric buses, charging stations, to train staff at the Transport Board and carry out some infrastructure work. While the first batch of 35 electric buses arrived on island in 2020 and went into operation in September and October, the remaining 14 buses arrived the following year.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb