Taxpayer-Funded Electric Buses in Miami Remain Out of Service Since Last Year
Electric buses, worth tens of millions of dollars and paid for by taxpayers, remain unused for over a year.
Thanks, Beege Welborn, for bringing this to my attention!
Local 10 in Miami investigated why the county has almost 100 electric buses, worth tens of millions of dollars and paid for by taxpayers, that remain unused for over a year.
Around 60 in Miami-Dade County are off the road, while 31 in Broward sit in a landfill site.
So what’s wrong? Reliability issues! Color me shocked:
The buses were manufactured by Proterra and were once promoted as the future of public transit.
Instead, both counties say the buses were plagued with reliability issues.
“They would only do a partial run, and then they would fail, which required us to either send out mechanics or to tow them back into one of the two garages that we have,” [CEO and general manager of Broward County TransitCoree Cuff] Lonergan said. “And that just kept happening and happening.”
Officials say parts have been difficult to obtain because they are proprietary.
Proterra filed for bankruptcy. Its assets were sold to a successor company, but counties say support and parts availability have remained unavailable.
The buses cost almost $96 million in total.
Anything federally funded comes with strings, even electric buses.
One string requires taxpayers to pay back a portion of the funding.
Broward County and Miami-Dade County are trying to get out of it:
In Broward County, transit officials have formally asked the Federal Transit Administration for forgiveness in an effort to avoid paying that money back.
“And so one of the things that we are, the application that we submitted to the FTA is for us to be able to get forgiveness from them so that we do not have to reimburse them for the funds that they have provided to us and also to be able to dispose of them,” said Coree Cuff Lonergan, CEO and general manager of Broward County Transit.
In Miami-Dade County, leaders are taking a different approach.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is still trying to find a way to get the buses back on the road.
“We are still hopeful we can still put them into service. The company that is the successor company is not able to give us the level of service we need,” she said.
Federal guidelines that the electric buses stay in service for 12 years or 500,000 miles.
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Exact same story in Ithaca, NY. Build quality was so bad that axles were separating from frames:
https://www.ithaca.com/news/ithaca/tcat-pulls-all-electric-buses-delays-sustainability-goals/article_4367fe6e-f688-11ee-8e73-0f1455324953.html
Ten square miles, surrounded by reality.
So, who’s following the money?
Newson
Kamaladingdong Harris memorial busses,
“Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up. It’s part of a nostalgia, a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there”
Usually there’s a sliding panel on the back with an arrow on it, you have to slide it off and then you can change the batteries.
One more piece of evidence that it really is the New Green Scam.
Good. A little bus diesel exhaust in the morning smells like victory.
Same thing with Proterra buses in Vermont. They bought 5 for several million dollars and then found out they couldn’t charge the batteries below 45 degrees. If you know anything about Northern New England you know it gets that cold 8 months of the year.
First off, grenades for Vermont government idiots who never tumbled to the well-known limitation of lithium battery damage when charged at sub-freezing temperatures… in Vermont!
Second, grenades for Proterra for supplying suck batteries that raised that limitation to 45° instead of 32° where it occurs in reputable batteries.
As Thomas Sowell observed, progressivism centers around the idea of replacing what works with what sounds good.
I’m pretty sure we could resurrect a mid century GM transit bus with a Detroit Diesel engine from the junkyard for a fraction of the price and get exponentially better reliability.
Or as more succinctly stated by Peter Hönig:
“Progressivism is 90% word magic. The other 10% is daddy issues.”
As to your second observation, LI had a great article some time back about a guy in Europe who bought a town’s existing diesel ferry for a song when the town was announcing grand plans for a brand new solar-powered ferry… stored it carefully and then sold it back to the town for a huge profit a couple years later after their new venture completely screwed the pooch.
Maybe the buses can be used for homeless shelters.
“Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is still trying to find a way to get the buses back on the road.”
You know she is lying, right?
And she also knows that we know she is lying.
Not for nothing, but who is the mayor?
First woman & a demon-o-crat!
Kinda says it all….
Nope. You took the funding and the conditions now that consequences have arrived you don’t want to hold up your end? If I was POTUS we’d have a basic rule that any jurisdiction asking for ‘forgiveness’ would immediately lose eligibility for all Federal grants precisely b/c that jurisdiction has demonstrated unwillingness to abide by terms of prior grants, then go seize their fire trucks and sell them to get started on paying off the debt they owe.
So getting in bed with what the government wants you to do doest work.
And those millions spent couldn’t keep that company in business. Bet lots of employees made a mint selling those busses.
almost 100 electric buses, worth tens of millions of dollars
When something is useless, it’s also worthless.
government(s) were never suppose to be profit /loss entities
its only the lazy populace that allows this
and omars not a millionaire…ahahahahhahahaha
There is a reason electricity cannot reliably and economically power buses, large truck, boats and airplanes.
Physics
I doubt there are many hard core leftist physicists, the subject matter is too challenging for the “feelings” type.
If you listen to the article, you find out that electric buses cost 10 times more to run than diesel buses.
The electric buses Cost a little less than $1 million each.
A 30 second Google search shows that diesel transit buses cost a quarter of 1 million each, new.
The lady mayor of Miami still wants to electrify the transit fleet