Mountain Rides gets e-buses ready to roll

Mountain Rides will officially put into service four new battery-electric buses on Monday, making it the first transit authority in Idaho to begin electrifying its fleet, the organization announced Wednesday.

The four zero-emissions buses delivered in June will replace aging diesel buses on the Valley Route, which had been getting under 5 miles per gallon. The battery-electric, or ‘e-buses,’ will stop at newly installed charging stations in Ketchum and Bellevue to recharge.

Each bus is about 35 feet long with a seating capacity of 35 passengers. They resemble existing buses on the Valley Route except for a ‘zero emissions’ banner on top, Mountain Rides Community Development Director Kim MacPherson said.

The organization had originally planned a community e-bus celebration in Ketchum Town Square on Sept. 9, but that will be put on hold “indefinitely” due to “ongoing or heightening risk of the Delta variant,” Executive Director Wally Morgus said Wednesday.

Mountain Rides Board Member Melody Mattson said the organization already has cause to celebrate. Mattson, who previewed the e-bus experience this week, said travelling on the Valley Route “was so quiet that when the bus pulls over, you can’t hear anything except for the blinkers.”

“It’s awesome,” she said. “The drivers are handling the new buses very well.”

Mountain Rides’ long-term plan is to convert its entire fleet of about 20 diesel buses to fully electric power by 2027.

“Against the backdrop of global climate change, as well as the commitment in our pristine alpine valley to sustainability … Mountain Rides is fully committed to instituting a 100% zero-emissions vehicle fleet,” Morgus said.

The battery-electric buses—priced at around $760,000 each—come from the Bay Area-company New Flyer of America. The organization’s fleet conversion is being financed by several sources: a $2.4 million Low-No Emissions grant from the Federal Transit Administration received last summer; about $1.7 million in settlement money from Volkswagen’s 2015 emissions scandal; and an additional $5 million in the bank from past Low-No Emissions grants.

The first stage of bus electrification this summer saw several dual-port charging stations and transformers installed at Mountain Rides’ Ketchum and Bellevue bus depots. An expansion of the organization’s Bellevue facility at Gannett Road and Clover Street last August will ensure that up to ten e-buses can eventually charge there.

Last week, Morgus said, Mountain Rides’ mechanics and drivers got an e-bus charging and training session from New Flyer.

“If our mechanics had any skepticism in their bones about the conversion to electric, they flipped 180 degrees on that,” he said. “Our staff is excited about the buses and feel like everyone is getting tremendous support from New Flyer in training.

Board member Tom Blanchard asked if Mountain Rides has taken an inventory of spare e-bus parts.

“We’ll learn what [spare] parts we’ll need to have as we go, but there aren’t as many moving parts compared to diesel-powered buses. Any issues we have experienced with the [new buses] have been largely software and programming issues,” Morgus said.

New Flyer is on call 24/7 for troubleshooting, he said, and has access to each bus’s status via the cloud online, where performance reports can be pulled and assessed immediately.

Morgus’s only concern was the delivery timeline of Mountain Rides’ next seven electric buses.

“I’m concerned about the lag in time from placing a purchase order to the actual delivery of buses, given that we have federal grant money that expires at the end of September 2022,” he said. “I imagine we’ll have to get those [grants] extended, because the lead time is about 10 months between order and delivery.

“But so far, we’re very happy with the product we’ve seen and will continue our switchover with New Flyer.”

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