The bus was on Interstate 787 when the pothole caused the vehicle to become disabled. The driver pulled over the bus, which had one student on board. No one was injured.
As it turned out, there was a recall from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on the bus along with four others in the Bethlehem e-fleet.
All told, five of the seven electric buses that Bethlehem purchased three years ago have been off the road in recent weeks. They were at the Matthews Bus dealership in Ballston Spa for maintenance and warranty repairs, according to the district.
Bethlehem isn't the only school district having problems with electric buses.
Earlier in February, a driver in Winthrop, Maine, suddenly lost power steering and braking, causing him to run into a snowbank to stop the vehicle.
Several municipalities nationwide, including Asheville, N.C., Colorado Springs, Colo., and Philadelphia have reported issues with transit e-buses. In Philadelphia, a fleet of 25 e-buses that were debuted during the 2019 Democratic presidential convention are unused, due to breakdowns and lack of parts, according to news reports.
YELLOW CAUTION LIGHTS RAISED OVER THE PRICE TAG
This all comes as mostly Republican lawmakers, along with some local school officials in New York, are putting up caution lights in front of Gov. Kathy Hochul's mandate to completely electrify the state's fleet of about 45,000 school buses by 2035.
In legislation the governor pushed through last year, all new school buses purchased by school districts starting in 2027 will have to be electric.
The lawmakers' main objection is the cost.
"That's $20 billion worth of buses," Republican Sen. George Borrello, of Silver Lake said. "We need to pump the brakes on all of this."
He and other Republican senators recently spoke out against the plan citing the cost.
Hochul is allocating $500 million from the state's Environmental Bond fund to help with the transition.
But that's a fraction of the total price tag, given the difference in cost and other factors between traditional diesel and e-buses. A regular diesel bus can run between $100,000 and $150,000 compared to $300,000 to $400,000 for an electric bus.
Now, with reports of breakdowns and recalls, opponents are raising new questions about whether the existing timetable is realistic.
Traditional diesel buses, for instance, have a failure rate of 1 or 2 percent, meaning that out of a fleet of 100 buses, one or two would be down for repairs on a given day, said David Christopher, executive director of the state Association for Pupil Transportation, which represents school bus directors.
For electric buses, the failure rate is about 20 percent, meaning 20 of 100 e-buses are down on any given day, due to problems with the buses or with their charging devices.
"They've been around for a long time," Christopher said of diesel buses and if something goes wrong. "It's typically an easy fix."
He stressed that he and his organization like the idea of emissions-free electric buses. They will help clean up the air and can help lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Their problem is with the timetable, the nation's most ambitious, and questions about the cost.
Schools that have purchased e-buses are experimenting in a sense, using the first generation of this new technology.
The newness, though, shouldn't deter school districts, said Adam Ruder, director of Clean Transportation for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which helps districts acquire and fund the new e-buses.
"It is new technology," Ruder said, adding that a lot of vehicles get recalls for various reasons. "The manufacturers and dealers have done a really good job of trying to stay on top of that."
So far, Ruder estimates there are between 50 and 60 electric school buses operating in 20 school districts in New York. NYSERDA has secured funding for 300 and is making up the difference between the cost of a traditional and an electric bus.
LOOSE BODY JOINTS AND WIRES
The Bethlehem buses were subject to two recalls — one for loose body joints and the other for power cables, which can lead to a rapid loss of power.
These are Thomas Built buses, one of three major electric bus manufacturers in operation.
(The bus in Maine was from a different manufacturer, Lion Electric, which also has a recall on some models.)
But these problems highlight another challenge in switching to e-buses, which is getting people trained to work on them, Borrello said.
He's sponsoring legislation that would hold off the current timetable in favor of creating pilot programs to see how the electric buses perform in different school districts with different routes: urban, rural and suburban.
It's one of several bills that have been introduced regarding the e-bus mandate.
Realistically, majority Democrats would have to get on board and sponsor a similar bill for the concept to move forward in the Legislature.
Ruder and Hochul's office both stress that as more e-buses are in use, prices should decrease.
There are other costs to the switchover, though.
Borrello's estimate of $20 billion for changing the fleet to e-buses includes the cost of setting up robust charging stations that can efficiently charge large numbers of buses.
That will likely require boosting the electric grid.
During a recent talk on the mandate, a Shenendehowa district official from Clifton Park said they would likely need a substation to handle the power to charge their 200-plus buses. The local utility will pay for part of that, but it represents an added cost.
Ruder stressed that the changeover to electric buses will be gradual, and no one is saying that an entire fleet should be swapped out at once.
Districts like Bethlehem with, say, seven buses, should be able to handle those electricity needs. Moreover, school buses can utilize lower-power slow chargers since they can sit overnight in parking lots or garages as they are being charged.
"Districts are not electrifying 100 percent of their fleets tomorrow," Ruder said. "Most can do it now without upgrades."
DISTRICTS WILL FOLLOW THE LAW AND VOTERS' DESIRES
At least one of the five Bethlehem buses was scheduled to come back online last week, and two are set to come back Monday, with another scheduled to return March 15.
As for the future of electric buses in the Bethlehem district, spokeswoman JoEllen Gardner said they will follow the law.
"As with all school districts in New York state, Bethlehem is preparing to meet the state's clean energy mandates for school bus fleets. Purchasing decisions involve many factors and many decision-making points for the district and those factors are carefully weighed each year," she said. "The ultimate decision is with the voters who approve bus purchases."
Indeed, many school districts purchase new buses after voters approve them during their annual school budget votes in May.
Generally, buses are replaced after five to eight years, Christopher said. They wear out not due to mechanical problems but the rust (and potholes) that plague almost any vehicle operating in New York state.
Historically, voters overwhelmingly approve budget items to purchase new buses. But Christopher and others wonder if that will change when voters see the high cost of mandated electric buses.
That may be a harder sell.
Last summer voters in Marathon, Cortland County, and Boonville, Oneida County, rejected proposals to buy three electric buses each, even though both would have come with EPA grants that would have significantly cut the purchase costs.
And in the Catskills Onteora school district in Ulster County, the school board last year said "No" to an $8.5 million EPA grant to help buy 21 electric buses. Among other things, they cited the unknown cost of building a charging infrastructure.
Said Christopher: "This is the most significant thing that has happened to a school bus since they painted them yellow in the 1930s."
©2024 the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
