Thursday, March 28, 2024

60 new CNG buses added to Victoria’s BC Transit fleet so far this year

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Amid all the chaos and uncertainty one project that was announced in October 2019 seems to be carrying on without a glitch this year.

So far in 2020, Greater Victoria has seen 60 new Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses added to its BC Transit fleet.

According to a statement from BC Transit, 25 new medium-duty CNG buses have been activated in Victoria, joining 35 heavy-duty CNG vehicles that also replaced existing aging buses in February.

Back in October 2019, the transit authority announced that 80 new buses would be running in the provincial capital by the end of 2020.

“The average age of the fleet in Victoria is 12 years old and we’ll have new vehicles start to come in January 2020. By the end of 2020, the average age of our fleet will be 6 years,” said BC Transit spokesperson Jonathon Dyck at the time.

72 of the new vehicles are slated to replace existing aging ones in Victoria, while the remaining eight will allow the crown corporation to expand their services in the city.

As of September 21, with 60 CNG buses in operation, the average conventional fleet age in Victoria has been reduced to 9.8 years.

The conversion to compressed natural gas is a part of BC Transit’s ‘low carbon fleet program’ which was designed in 2018 to meet provincial targets for greenhouse gas emissions.

This particular step allows the transit authority to bridge the transition to electric propulsion vehicles by introducing renewable fuels.

BC Transit tested their first battery electric bus in Victoria for six months in 2018 to help them better understand the bus’ capabilities and range.

The crown corporation plans to purchase 10 of these electric buses and put them into regular service in Victoria in 2021.

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Brishti Basu
Former Senior Staff Writer and Content Manager at Victoria Buzz.

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