A lot can happen in 10 months. Last April, the Voltrek team cheered alongside other local business and community leaders as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu unveiled plans for an electric school bus pilot program designed to improve health and quality of life for the local community.
Fast forward to today, and Voltrek is on the front lines of this nation-leading electrification project. Currently, we are wrapping up the installation of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure for Boston Public Schools (BPS), which plans to deploy its first 20 electric school buses later this month. These new Blue Bird buses will serve approximately 2,500 students at 42 public schools.
“This pilot program is the largest of its kind in the Northeast, and will help us gather more data on route efficiency, bus operations as well as the climate and public health impacts with an overall goal of fully electrifying our school bus fleet by 2030,” said Mayor Wu at a press conference on Feb. 6, 2023. This is a massive undertaking for BPS, which currently runs 620 buses every day to move nearly 22,000 students over 43,000 miles, according to BPS Transportation Director Dan Rosengard.
During the first phase of the pilot program, Voltrek is contracted to manage the turnkey installation of 20 EV charging stations at the Readville bus yard in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The charging infrastructure, supplied by InCharge Energy, is engineered to support the future expansion of up to 145 electric school buses.
The BPS electric school bus pilot program is part of Boston’s “Green New Deal” initiative to electrify city vehicle fleets. Other project partners involved in this collaborative effort include Transdev, BPS’ fleet management contractor, and Lynnwell Associates, an IBEW Local 103 electrical contractor.
