San Francisco to have all-electric bus fleet by 2035

An all-electric bus fleet is coming to San Francisco by 2035. The commitment stems from an agreement between mayor Mark Farrell and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which operates Muni – the city’s public transit system. Muni manages a fleet of zero-emission electric trolley buses and a fleet of low- emission electric hybrid vehicles. The SFMTA is rolling out new electric buses with higher capacity battery systems that supply power for its vehicles along several hybrid routes.
May 21, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

An all-electric bus fleet is coming to San Francisco by 2035. The commitment stems from an agreement between mayor Mark Farrell and the 4802 San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which operates Muni – the city’s public transit system.

Muni manages a fleet of zero-emission electric trolley buses and a fleet of low- emission electric hybrid vehicles.

The SFMTA is rolling out new electric buses with higher capacity battery systems that supply power for its vehicles along several hybrid routes.

Additionally, the agency plans to advance its technology when manufacturers can prove electric buses can withstand heavy ridership and steep hills. It would also consider new facilities that can charge a large fleet and develop an infrastructure to power vehicles in service or on the street.

John Haley, SFMTA’s transit director says: “While the battery technology is emerging rapidly, it isn’t quite ready for primetime. Manufacturers aren’t yet producing the number of all-electric buses San Francisco and other urban areas would need, nor could we guarantee that the vehicles would work for the required 15 years with heavy ridership and challenging topography.”

The SFMTA intends to buy a limited number of zero-emission battery electric buses in 2019 and evaluate how they perform on crowded and hilly routes.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Canada invests $4.2m in green bus research
    February 24, 2020
    The Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (Cutric) has entered into a partnership to establish research institutions dedicated to battery electric and fuel cell electric buses. 
    Read More
  • Emissions reductions targets to have major impact on transport
    October 28, 2015
    As bold moves aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been introduced in California, David Crawford looks at the ramifications for transportation. California Governor Jerry Brown’s recent dramatic raising of the bar on emissions reduction policy for the state has won him praise from Japan, Australia, Europe and the secretariat of the critical UN conference on climate change being held in Paris in November/December 2015. His April 2015 executive order aimed at bringing emissions to 40% below 1990 lev
    Read More
  • EVs: Time for a rethink
    December 14, 2021
    Given a growing body of evidence that EVs are not the clean, green machines they are made out to be, Andrew Bunn suggests they can only be part of the puzzle – not the answer to environmental problems
    Read More
  • Cowlines app aims to bring MaaS to North America
    May 8, 2019
    Europe is seen as leading the charge as providers battle to gain traction for their Mobility as a Service apps. But that could be about to change with the roll-out of Cowlines in North America It is widely agreed that Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platforms have the potential to replace a lot of urban private car journeys – more than 2.3 billion of them by 2023 in fact, according to Juniper Research. Implementation of MaaS options is likely to be quicker in Europe than in the US for a number of reasons (
    Read More

Highlighted Content