Quinte West is planning for a zero-emission future for Quinte Transit.
A joint $125,000 investment between the Government of Canada and the municipality will kick fund the planning phase for Quinte Transit to transition to a full fleet of zero-emission vehicles.
The federal government is contributing $100,000 to the study through the Zero Emission Transit Fund with Quinte West providing the rest.
The Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium will oversee the study in which President and CEO Dr. Josipa Petrunic says zero-emission vehicles offer a quieter, more comfortable mode of transportation to transit users while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The study will take about a year.
“And this announcement is really about giving the city the money it needs to do all that planning work, the math, the economics, the physics to figure out how much do we need to buy, when will it pay us back, how much will it reduce emissions and will it ultimately be a better service for the community.”
Petrunic says it can actually be more difficult for a smaller community to make the transition.
There are several reasons why.
It can be harder to find appropriately sized vehicles and have the infrastructure to support them.
Electric vehicles could cost twice as much as gas or diesel powered vehicles.
“And this money is basically going to allow us to figure out exactly what kinds of vehicles are in the market that could serve their transit deployment and their transit operations. How much will it cost, how much will it pay back. Like if they’re going to save money over diesel, how long will they have to wait to get paid back for the premium that they’re definitely going to pay for the new vehicle.”
She says infrastructure is also so important.
“You know Quinte doesn’t even have necessarily enough locations to park its current vehicles so if you don’t have proper parking facilities, that can make it hard to charge up vehicles overnight. And then depending on how aggressively they’re used throughout the day, they might even need to charge up during the day. So that creates some complexity. You’ve got to figure out where you’re going to install these chargers. What kind of facility do you need?”
Another difficulty for a smaller community is that they don’t track the same data larger centres do.
“And so what we have to do is model every stop, every start, every bus stop, every intersection, every yield sign. Because all of it is an energy waster. And to do that, we usually need the city to provide us some very detailed data about their municipality and also their ridership. And usually smaller cities, they haven’t collected or established data reports where they have all this stuff just ready to go.”
Petrunic says they’ll also look at the possibility of a complete shift in how the system is run to make it more efficient.
“And interestingly and very appropriately Quinte is looking at on-demand transit. Private industry is only gonna develop technology when there’s a mass clientele, not when there’s only a few vehicles. So you gotta work with what’s in the market now and one way to solve the problem is to convert the vehicles into on-demand.”
Quinte West Mayor Jim Harrison calls the announcement a great example of how federal and municipal governments can work together to deliver sustainable transit infrastructure that minimizes the community’s environmental footprint.
