The Boulder Valley School District on Wednesday added its first electric bus to its fleet of 255 buses, taking another step toward meeting climate and clean air goals.
The addition of the Blue Bird Vision bus makes Boulder Valley the first school district in the state with an electric school bus, district officials said. The new bus has a travel range of 120 miles, is powered by a 160 kWh battery package and is a “clean, efficient and more environmentally sustainable” alternative, according to the district.
“I just felt pure joy,” Landon Hilliard, Boulder Valley’s alternative transportation coordinator, said about the bus’s arrival. “We’ve been dreaming about this bus for a long time. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado. The school district feels a responsibility to act.”
Boulder Valley, which has worked for several years on the project, included electric charging stations in the design for the new Boulder Transportation Center that opened in 2019. The district also added electric charging stations for personal vehicles at its administration building and almost all of its schools, as well as buying three plug-in passenger electric vehicles for district staff member use.
Boulder Valley bought the $380,000 bus with the help of a $200,000 ALT Fuels Colorado grant from the Regional Air Quality Council. To qualify for the grant, the district had to demolish a 30-year-old diesel fuel bus and get a “certificate of destruction” from the scrap yard to prove it couldn’t be sold and reused.
The electric bus will be used daily in rotation on different school routes as other buses are brought in to the transportation center for inspections and maintenance, hitting the road in a couple of weeks.
“We know we’re paying a premium over a regular bus, but we know it’s important to get into the technology,” Hilliard said, adding the district plans to us the new bus to evaluate the potential maintenance savings of electric buses.
Boulder Valley officials said the new bus also is part of a broader community effort to add electric vehicles that includes Boulder, Via Mobility Services and the University of Colorado Boulder.
“There’s a greater impact when agencies work in tandem and put more electric vehicles on the road,” Hilliard said. “We’re all moving together to electrify our fleets as much as realistically possible.”
