NJ Transit is behind other agencies in deploying electric buses, report says
Updated Apr 03, 2021;
A report by New Jersey Policy Perspective said NJ Transit needs to find funding to speed up its purchases of electric buses in order to meet state environmental goals and it made recommendations about how the agency could do it.
The report said NJ Transit lags behind other transit agencies in purchasing and putting battery-powered buses on the road. It also warned that NJ Transit’s timeline will be “misaligned” with the state’s Electric Vehicle Law, which specifies a target date for 100% electric bus purchases by December 2032.
A New Jersey law signed in 2020 calls for NJ Transit to make sure all of its bus purchases are zero-emission vehicles by the end of 2032.
According to a report released Wednesday by New Jersey Policy Perspective, there s no way the transit agency will come close to achieving that goal, unless something changes. In fact, according to the progressive think tank, progress toward a fully electric bus fleet will already be well behind schedule in just the next few years.
NJPP s report, which was released with a news conference over Zoom, pointed to the many ways NJ Transit can help offset the costly acquisition and deployment of electric buses, and identified potential sources of funding to make full electrification an attainable goal sooner rather than later.
Credit: (MTAPhotos via Creative Commons under CC BY 2.0)
An articulated electric bus in service just across the Hudson in New York City
Clean-energy advocates urged New Jersey transportation planners to quickly replace the state’s fleet of diesel buses with electric ones, arguing that the new vehicles would cut greenhouse-gas emissions, reduce maintenance and fuel bills and improve public health.
New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal think tank, issued a report on Wednesday saying that adoption of electric buses would improve air quality, especially for people in environmental-justice communities who are more likely to use public transit than other residents.