When LA Metro’s staff announced that meeting the agency’s adopted goal of 100% zero-emission buses by 2030 was no longer achievable, four of the Los Angeles city-based Metro board members pushed back.
Mayor Karen Bass, Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian, L.A. City Council member Kate Yaroslavsky and Bass-appointee Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker joined together in a motion adopted by the full Metro Board on Thursday, April 26, to encourage the transit agency to stay on track with an aggressive conversion plan and not push the goal back to 2035.
The board motion asks the staff to develop a strategy for buying more electric or hydrogen-powered buses sooner rather than later, and tap into the federal Inflation Reduction Act funding for zero-emission infrastructure that reduces local smog and greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
“The board should make it clear that when the board sets goals, we don’t do so lightly,” Yaroslavsky said, adding that the 2030 goal was adopted in 2017 and not enough progress has been made in the past seven years. “Getting there by 2030 I know is difficult,” she said. “But I don’t understand the apparent lack of strategy in pursuing this goal.”
The motion, led by Yaroslavsky, also directs the agency to move ahead with charging ports and or hydrogen refueling stations in the near term, even if it means taking funds from other capital projects. The motion was softened to say that the changeover must not affect bus service.
The motion does not set any new requirements, but rather encourages a more “ambitious and actionable” schedule for the emission-free buses and the necessary charging infrastructure.
Most likely, due to a dwindling number of electric bus manufacturers, rising costs, grid capacity issues and electric bus ranges that do not meet longer-route requirements, the staff recommendation to delay the compliance date from 2030 to 2035 will stand, barring some marketplace or technology…
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