City’s resistance to electric buses a mistake

Opinion

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This article was published 13/12/2024 (301 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg is scaling back plans to electrify its fleet of transit buses. That’s disappointing.

Winnipeg was once a leader in the transition from carbon-emitting buses to battery power. The city led the nation in 2015 when it launched a pilot project to put four electric buses on the road.

The objective was to determine whether zero-emission buses could operate efficiently and reliably in Winnipeg’s cold weather and if charging stations could keep buses operating on schedule. They did.

The electric buses worked exceptionally well along Route 20, which included a stretch from downtown to the airport, where a charging station was installed. The pilot project was a resounding success.

Then, plans to electrify Winnipeg Transit’s fleet stalled. A 2017 task force report, which recommended the addition of 12 to 20 electric buses, was kept under wraps for two years until it was finally released publicly.

City council subsequently ordered study after study on electric buses and failed to make a decision on how to proceed. Funding from senior levels of government was explored and eventually secured. But inertia set in (as it often does at city hall), and the process continued to move at a glacial pace. Winnipeg Transit still has no electric buses on the road.

The city budget released his week stated a previous plan to add 100 electric buses to the fleet has been reduced to 71. The city plans to buy more diesel buses instead.

Nearly a decade after launching its pilot project, Winnipeg has fallen behind most other major Canadian cities on moving toward zero-emission buses.

The argument behind adding more diesel vehicles to the fleet is they’re cheaper to buy — about half the cost of electric buses. Winnipeg Transit can get more diesel buses on the road cheaper and quicker.

That would help improve service by increasing bus frequency and hopefully encourage more people to get out of their vehicles and use transit. The more people who take the bus, the greater the reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions.

It’s a reasonable argument. But there are other factors at play.

Winnipeg Transit is planning to launch its new primary network system on June 29. It’s a complete overhaul of routes and scheduling designed to improve frequency and reliability. The hope is that it will attract more commuters.

Ridership in Winnipeg has declined or stalled in recent years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s due, in part, to unreliable and unpredictable service, including a lack of bus frequency.

That is reflected in Transit’s own data. Only 74.5 per cent of buses ran on time in 2023, down from 77.1 per cent in 2022. Just over eight per cent of buses ran early in 2023 and 17.3 per cent ran late. Some don’t show up at all.

Meanwhile, operators sometimes can’t pick up people waiting at stops because their buses are full. There aren’t enough buses on the road to provide consistent, reliable service.

The service is also seen as unsafe by many. There has been an increase in assaults and other violence on buses in recent years against both passengers and drivers. The city has responded by adding on-board security personnel. But there aren’t enough of them to have a significant impact.

Adding more buses — diesel or electric — to the system in conjunction with the new network planned for next year should help boost ridership. But that doesn’t mean the city can’t add more electric buses at the same time.

While it’s true diesel buses cost less, they are also more expensive to operate. Electric power is cheaper than diesel and zero-emission buses require far less maintenance. While the up-front costs of diesel buses are lower, the long-term costs are similar.

Naturally, the city alone can’t electrify the fleet. It requires financial support from the federal and provincial governments, which the city has tapped into through the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program.

Whether the plan to add 71 more electric buses to Transit’s fleet (20 in 2025 and 51 in 2026) materializes is anybody’s guess. There have been so many plans unveiled by the city over the past decade to transition to zero-emission buses that have been cancelled or delayed, the announcements are now almost meaningless.

The city, the province and the federal government need to do better. Winnipeg requires more buses, a vastly improved transit system and more electric buses to effectively reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Winnipeg needs to be a leader again on zero-emission buses.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca