Before electric buses can hit the streets of Guelph, they’ll need somewhere to charge. That’s what city council, meeting as the committee of the whole, unanimously approved on Tuesday.
Four charging stations are to be installed at the city’s transit headquarters on Watson Road South at a cost of $1.5 million.
“This will allow the city to purchase electric buses for upcoming lifecycle replacements and use the electric buses as a pilot study,” Bryan Ho-Yan, the city’s manager of corporate energy and climate change, told the committee.
“This will enable Guelph Transit to gain hands-on experience with electric buses.”
Before the installation can begin, council must first ratify the committee decision, which is expected later this month.
When fully charged, buses have a range of about 300 km. It takes about four hours for the batteries to fully charge.
“This is very exciting,” said Coun. Dan Gibson, noting bus fleet electrification is part of a much larger proposal to create a campus for transit, operations, fleet maintenance and corporate building maintenance departments.
That proposed campus would be on city-owned property located at the northwest corner of Watson Parkway South and Stone Road East. City staff is still working on a business plan to present to council on the campus. It has not been approved at this time.
The provincial and federal governments have pledged $74 million of the estimated $178 million cost of expanding and electrifying the city’s bus fleet.
f the new campus moves ahead, the four charging stations can be moved there, Ho-Yan noted.
