For rural transit agencies, a rocky road to zero emissions

This story was originally published by The Daily Yonder.

Difficult terrain. Harsh winters. Pervasive wildfires. Limited vehicles and funds. These are just some of the challenges rural transit agencies face as they take on a project not often associated with rural: decarbonized public transportation. 

In 2017 the Tahoe Transportation District, serving communities near the southern shore of Lake Tahoe, received a grant to purchase three electric buses as part of their early transition to zero emissions. Four years later, in August 2021, they received the first bus. 

Around the same time, the Caldor Fire, which was started by a bullet in California’s neighboring El Dorado County, spread east and forced an evacuation of the city of South Lake Tahoe. The Tahoe Transportation District hadn’t yet put their new electric buses in service so they were not part of the fleet used to help evacuate the community. This was a good thing, as it turned out.  

“If we would have used the electric vehicles, we would have just gone over the mountain pass down the hill, and then that would have been it, we wouldn't have been able to make a return trip because there was no electrical charging infrastructure on the Nevada side,” Tahoe Transportation District Transportation Services Director George Fink said in a phone call. 

The charge that limits how far an electric bus can go is one of many issues rural transit agencies face in making the switch to zero emissions. Some also contend with climate, terrain, earthquakes, unreliable electrical grids, inadequate government funding, and an industry that hasn’t been able to build the vehicles needed to navigate the switch. In California, the situation is urgent, as its transit agencies face a 2028 mandate that will only allow them to purchase zero emissions vehicles. 

Most Rural Buses are ‘Built Different,’ and Hard to Find

The market for public transit buses in America is relatively limited, and even more so for rural agencies. Many rural agencies operate buses called “cutaways,” which are essentially bus bodies grafted onto truck chassis. Data from the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database (NTD) shows about 20,000 cutaways operating in rural areas in 2022. 

Dealers across the U.S. sell cutaways fueled primarily by gasoline, diesel, and compressed natural gas, and to a lesser extent, battery-electric and propane. Construction of cutaways slowed earlier in the pandemic due to limited chassis availability, in part because the chassis used for these buses have also been used to manufacture motorhomes, delivery vehicles, and ambulances. 

“Ford and GM have an allocation based on previous year's sales. So when sales fell off the table [early in the pandemic], the next year was hard to get chassis from those manufacturers,” says Paul Gauerke, general manager of North Central Bus and Equipment, which sells cutaway buses to rural transit agencies in Minnesota and North Dakota. Though the situation is improving for buses that use certain types of fuels, such as propane and gasoline, chassis for other types of buses remain difficult to find. 

Agencies using federal funding to purchase vehicles have even more limited choices. A federal law requires most federal funds spent on vehicle and component purchases to be spent in the U.S. And the purchase of a vehicle can’t happen until the vehicle passes emissions, structural, performance, and maintenance testing at a facility in Altoona, Pennsylvania. 

Tahoe Transportation District placed an order for battery-electric cutaways in 2019. Unfortunately, those cutaways will never make it to the southern shores of Lake Tahoe. The company they ordered from sold the battery business in July 2022. Four months later, those company’s battery-electric cutaways lost their Buy America certification. “They discontinued the manufacturing in the United States, so they lost their Buy American certification for their vehicles, which made it impossible for us to use federal grants to purchase those vehicles,” Fink said. The Tahoe Transportation District has been struggling to find a compatible replacement since.

Situated in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Lake Tahoe area and its surrounding slopes are known for skiing. That’s because the region receives anywhere from 200 to 400 inches of snow annually, depending on elevation. To navigate steep roadways during snowfall, people wrap chains around their vehicles’ tires. 

Tahoe Transportation District has tried to find a battery-electric cutaway that is compatible with tire chains. The problem is that the bus’s battery rests in the same place that automatic drop-down chains need to be installed. “That’s a must-have for us,” Fink said.

Fink says he has no problems with manually applying chains to bus tires, but that approach presents other problems. “I had one manufacturer tell me, ‘I'm not sure that we would be able to honor the warranty, if you guys were going to be manually chaining the bus. Because if the chain comes apart,’ – which chains typically do from time to time – ‘then it's going to beat up against the battery. And then that could be a significant cost that we would consider no fault of our own,’” said Fink, recounting one conversation. 

A Literal Power Struggle

“There’s not a lot of good options out there right now for us,” Fink said. 

The Altoona bus testing facility has only tested five battery-electric cutaways. None appear to be able to cover as much distance as a gasoline cutaway. A study conducted by engineering consulting firm AECOM found battery capacities on electric cutaways are limited, anywhere from 43 to 157 kilowatt-hours, in part because of limited space onboard to store those batteries. Transportation agencies would have to buy three electric cutaways for every one gasoline cutaway they replace. 

“You can run a gasoline cutaway, it'll be out there all day. Whereas a battery electric cutaway, you'll have to switch it out, or you'll have to have some sort of on-route charging. You’ll get 100 miles [per charge],” said Jerome Qiriazi, Humboldt Transit Authority planner. Humboldt Transit Authority serves communities along the northern California coast. 

The limited battery capacity also poses a challenge in climates with temperature extremes, such as Minnesota. Like cell phone batteries, bus batteries use lithium, and their capacity decreases in cold weather because electrolytes are moving more slowly. Additionally, much of the energy from the batteries is spent generating heat for the bus itself. 

“Because of our climate … you need a large battery to drive range. Electric cutaways – and the size of the cutaway chassis – is relatively small. One of the challenges is getting a big enough battery [that also fits],” said Gauerke from North Central Bus and Equipment. 

The case is similar for rural agencies operating full-size battery-electric buses. In southern Oregon, Josephine County Transit operates four battery-electric buses. These buses were converted to run on battery power, after they spent years operating on diesel fuel, either as airport shuttles in sunny San Diego or in Utah’s Cache Valley. 

During the warmer months, these buses can run up to 180 miles. They run for about three to four hours before they are swapped out to charge, usually around the time the driver starts taking their break. 

When it gets cold however, they can only run half that distance because much of the energy is used to power a 24-volt heating system to keep the bus and its batteries warm. “I don't know the difference in range if we turn the heaters off, because that would be essentially cruel to the driver,” Josephine County Transit Manager Scott Chancey said. 

Two of the electric buses running in Josephine County’s Grants Pass also struggle with hills. “EV1 and EV2 [the former Utah buses] can’t go anywhere other than within the city of Grants Pass. EV3 and EV4 [the former airport shuttles] have significantly more power, so they’re able to climb the hills to get out of the valley,” Chancey said. 

Josephine County is looking into getting diesel-electric hybrid buses that can operate on battery power for up to 20 miles, after which the diesel engine kicks in. Chancey said the buses would be able to run on full electricity in Grants Pass, which is a carbon and particulate matter maintenance area, as well as in smaller communities. “And then recharge itself as it comes back into town using diesel,” Chancey added. 

The particular diesel-electric hybrid buses Josephine County is looking to get already operate in larger cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Indianapolis, and Boston. Although they don’t have a prominent presence in rural areas, rural agencies are starting to order them with help from grants such as the federal Low or No Emissions grant program, enacted in 2015 and supercharged by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021.

Eagle Valley Transportation Authority, serving parts of western Colorado, ordered five such hybrids in April and received $4.6 million in funding from the Low-No grant in July to purchase more. Glenn County, in northern California, also received $3.4 million in 2023 to purchase similar hybrids. 

However, Glenn County officials said at a January meeting that they may run into issues with getting their hybrid buses. In a couple years, California agencies will only be allowed to purchase zero emissions buses. In 2018, the California Air Resources Board enacted a rule requiring California transit agencies to purchase only zero emissions transit vehicles beginning in 2028 (with some exceptions). It’s part of the state’s ambitious 2045 goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85%. 

As a result, two agencies northwest of Glenn County: Humboldt Transit Authority and Lake Transit Authority, are looking into an even less common option: hydrogen. 

Rocket Power

Hydrogen-powered vehicles work similarly to battery-electric buses; the fuel passes through a membrane that generates water vapor, as well as electricity to charge a battery, which is then used to power the bus. California is building out a network of hydrogen refueling stations throughout the state as part of their effort to get to 1.5 million zero emissions vehicles by 2025. 

Aside from the limitations in range for battery-electric buses, as well as the need to be able to respond to natural disasters, Humboldt and Lake Transit’s desire for hydrogen is influenced by their power utility’s poor track record. Their supplier, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), has been faulted for starting several wildfires and have hiked rates to settle their claims. They have also had to preventatively shut off power during windy summer days to ensure their power lines don’t spark a fire. PG&E announced at a November 2022 Humboldt County board meeting that it will take seven years to build up capacity to satiate demand from power-hungry customers, including pot growers. 

“Whether it’s the Public Safety Power Shutoff, or just the power going out because of wildfires in the area, that did play a part in our choice to go primarily with hydrogen,” Lake Transit Authority program manager James Sookne said. 

No hydrogen cutaway exists on the market today, and none of them have been tested at Altoona. However, two agencies, Kailua-Kona in Hawaii, and SunLine, serving California’s Coachella Valley, are testing them out. SunLine hasn’t yet put their hydrogen cutaway into passenger service. “I'm hoping that the data is good for those and that they eventually become available for procurement. But at the moment, [it’s] just sort of [a] wait and see game,” Sookne said.

The only hydrogen buses that exist on the market today that can be purchased with federal funds are built by heavy-duty manufacturers, such as Minnesota-based New Flyer. At the time of publication, New Flyer only makes hydrogen buses that are 40-feet long, or 60-feet long with an accordion section in the middle to facilitate easier turns. 

Humboldt hopes to receive their first 40-foot hydrogen bus later this year and plans to run it on a long-distance route they launched in January connecting Eureka, California to Ukiah, California in neighboring Mendocino County. This bus will be part of a pilot to evaluate the effectiveness of hydrogen-fueled vehicles on long-distance transit routes. Humboldt hopes to ultimately acquire 10 additional buses like it in 2026. 

But both the 40-foot and 60-foot hydrogen buses are too big for what Sookne needs for Lake Transit. “A lot of our routes go on roads that tend to be narrower and with a lot of tight curves,” Sookne said. One such road is Highway 29, which connects Lake County with neighboring Napa County, the heart of California’s Wine Country. A route that runs on that road today, snaking over an extinct volcano as it runs between Lake County and the quaint Napa Valley town of Calistoga, uses a cutaway. Sookne hopes to operate hydrogen buses on that road someday. 

While California agencies look to hydrogen, other agencies lacking ready access to hydrogen, as well as facing limitations in their electrical grid, are considering another option: propane.

Pros and Cons of Propane

Rural agencies in Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and South Dakota received a combined $17 million from the federal government to purchase propane buses and associated infrastructure. South Dakota agencies alone received a combined $1 million in funding from the Federal Transit Administration’s 2023 Low-No Emissions grant to purchase a total of 12 buses and kits to convert them to a propane fuel system.

One of these agencies is Prairie Hills Transit, serving the Black Hills region in the western part of South Dakota. In an email to the Daily Yonder, Barb Cline, the agency’s executive director, said electricity isn’t a good option for them. “We don’t have the grid available to charge [the buses],” Cline said. 

Propane advocates, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy, say the fuel is cleaner because it has lower amounts of carbon compared to gasoline and diesel fuel. In addition, a press release issued in May by the two South Dakota agencies and Roush CleanTech, the company providing the conversion kits, said their propane-powered buses emit “90% less nitrogen oxide emissions than the EPA’s strictest standard.” 

Industry experts say converting buses to run on propane is relatively simple, with the installation of a “gaseous prep” package that modifies the intake and exhaust valves and valve seats before the kits themselves are installed. Dealers of cutaway buses say a propane bus costs about 15 to 20% more than a gasoline cutaway. 

Though Prairie Hills Transit’s propane buses have been in South Dakota since May, they haven’t yet entered service. The agency is waiting for Roush to conduct a statewide training for employees who will handle and fuel those buses. “Whoever’s fueling the vehicles is supposed to be certified,” Cline said. Cline added the buses were also slow to be outfitted with cameras and radios, and one of them encountered a warranty problem not related to the propane propulsion system. 

Oregon’s Josephine County also considered purchasing propane cutaways in 2017, but ultimately decided against it. Chancey had questions. “If you did a conversion on a cutaway, was the horsepower the same? And nobody could tell me,” He added that he was moving the fleet towards larger vehicles anyway, which don’t normally use propane. 

Propane-fueled public transport is  unlikely to come to California, because of their zero emissions mandate. “While propane can make vehicles cleaner, it does not make engines anywhere near zero for smog-forming, toxic, or greenhouse gas emissions,” said California Air Resources Board communications director Lys Mendez in an email to the Daily Yonder. 

Tahoe Transportation District also decided against propane, encountering issues similar to those in Josephine County. “We don’t want to use any of the propane … because that just doesn’t have the torque, especially once you get the altitude because you’re burning a fuel that is greatly affected by being at 6,500 feet,” Fink said. 

Preparing for Disaster

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, wildfires, and tsunamis plague northern California. In particular, off the coast of Humboldt County is the Mendocino Triple Junction, where the Pacific, North American, and Gorda tectonic plates converge. Some of the state’s strongest earthquakes have happened here. 

Humboldt Transit expects hydrogen buses (and their fueling stations) to be more reliable than their power grid after a catastrophic earthquake. “One of the really appealing things about hydrogen fueling stations is the size of the backup generator needed is 250, 300 kilowatts, which is very doable. Whereas if you’re trying to support megawatts of battery, electric bus charging, that’s a whole different ball of wax,” Qiriazi, the Humboldt Transit planner, said. 

Hydrogen also appealed to Lake Transit because it can be used to fuel buses faster than electricity, which comes in handy during an emergency. “In the event of an emergency when we need to help evacuate people, the ability to refuel a bus in, say, 10 minutes, rather than having to sit on a charger for two hours to have enough power to get around, also played a part in that,” Sookne said. 

Humboldt Transit solicited proposals to build a fueling station in April, but they haven’t yet been able to award a contract.  In June, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors rejected the only bid they received due to the fact that Humboldt Transit wasn’t able to conduct a required cost comparison analysis, in part because such a hydrogen fueling station would be the first of its kind in a rural environment in the United States. 

On August 2, Humboldt Transit reissued their request for proposals to build a hydrogen fueling station. It asks bidders to propose the best way to build the station while accounting for natural disasters. Submissions are due in mid-September.

Very Little Funding Actually Makes It to Rural 

Many rural agencies have tapped federal and state funds to decarbonize their fleets. Prairie Hills Transit, for example, received two rounds of funding from the Federal Low or No Emissions Grant program. The Low-No grant is also what Tahoe Transportation District will be using to purchase six more hybrid buses. 

Historically, some rural agencies have found it challenging to rely on federal grants to fund their zero emissions plans. The Low-No program receives applications from agencies small and large, and over the past three years, no more than 7% of funding from the Low-No pot actually made it to agencies headquartered in OMB-designated rural areas. 

Humboldt instead focused on securing state grants, including those funded by the auction of pollution rights, known as the cap-and-trade program. First introduced through legislation passed in 2012, this program requires industrial polluters and fuel suppliers to either reduce pollution or purchase pollution rights at auction. Not only did the program reduce statewide pollution by 14%, it also generated $3 billion to $4.3 billion annually. 

Humboldt and Lake Transit Authorities received a cumulative $60 million over three funding cycles in their bid to transition their fleets to hydrogen. “You don't have that sort of level of competing with 50 other states,” Qiriazi said. 

Meanwhile in Oregon, Grants Pass was able to obtain funding for its electric buses from the federal Congestion Management and Air Quality (CMAQ) program, rather than compete for funds specifically for low or no-emissions vehicles. That’s because the rural community is considered to be in a metropolitan area, even though the city itself has a population under 50,000. “Funds are critical. They’re limited. If I have the access to CMAQ funds at my level here, I’m gonna use those rather than compete statewide with other agencies,” Chancey said. 

Opinions on the Road

Though the electric buses in Grants Pass are old, they run and sound like they’re new. The interior is bright and clean with USB charging cables that riders can use to charge their phones dangling from the ceiling. And when the driver activates the turn signals or when the steering wheel is turned past a certain degree, the bus shouts “warning! Bus turning left!” or “warning! Bus turning right!”  

“It’s really smooth, it’s really comfortable. Electrify is the way to go right now. It’s just quiet. It’s nice. I mean, it’s more modern,” said Grants Pass resident Brandon Berry while riding one of the buses. 

On the other hand, some riders are skeptical about battery-electric buses. “I have my reservations about electric vehicles, because [of] the technologies and work [they need] to be made even practical at this point,”,” resident Bob Webb said.  

Meanwhile, in January, Humboldt Transit Authority launched their route connecting Eureka to Ukiah, running gasoline cutaways on it as they wait for their hydrogen buses to come. Joanne McGarry, an Arcata, California resident and environmental activist, was one of the first two people riding the route in a gasoline cutaway. 

McGarry thinks hydrogen-powered vehicles are the way to go. “The more we can get away from the fossil fuels, the better,” McGarry said, just as the bus returned from Ukiah.

Support for this story was provided by The Neal Peirce Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting journalism on ways to make cities, towns, and their larger regions work better for all people.