Auditor raises red flags in Metro’s push to electrify bus fleet by 2035 (2024)

King County Metro Transit faces major hurdles in meeting its 2035 goal of transitioning its fleet to fully electric buses, according to a report from the county auditor.

A lack of manufacturers, strong demand for electric buses from the nation’s transit agencies and an unsure energy supply are the biggest obstacles for Metro’s plan to green its line of 1,400 buses. Currently about 50 of those buses are battery-electric.

Luc Poon, with the county auditor’s office, flew even more red flags over the push to electrify for members of the Metropolitan King County Council’s Government and Accountability Oversight Committee. Namely, the technology Metro needs doesn’t yet exist.

“Current technology does not meet all of Metro’s service needs,” Poon said last week, highlighting the agency’s RapidRide routes, which run frequently and cover long distances. “The current battery technology doesn’t have the range, and the time to charge is too long, to accommodate these routes at this time.”

Mark Ellerbrook, Metro’s capital division director, said in an interview he was confident Metro would have a zero emission fleet on schedule.

“That is our goal, that is what we are doing and we have a plan in place that gets us to 2035,” Ellerbrook said, asserting that Metro is leading the nation in transit electrification, which comes with risks. “We will be among the first, if not the first, fully [zero emissions] transit agency in the country. Along with that, we will be among the cutting edge.”

Ellerbrook and Huoi Trieu, Metro’s zero emissions director, also said the agency’s trolley bus network could be expanded to meet emissions goals, and noted that last week the agency announced a pilot project to bring four hydrogen fuel cell buses to the fleet in 2026.

Still, Ellerbrook said Metro is taking the audit of its plan seriously. If the deadline isn’t met, which Ellerbrook says is unlikely, the existing fleet will maintain transit service.

“We have one of the most experienced vehicle maintenance teams in the country,” he said. “We’re confident about reaching our goal. We are also confident that we can keep our rolling stock in good order if something were to come up.”

As Poon pointed out in the presentation, some things are out of Metro’s control, like power generation. “It’s difficult for Metro to ensure enough electricity supply for all of those battery-electric buses,” Poon said.

Metro has so far secured enough energy from Seattle City Light for six of eight planned charging stations. But contracts to power two Eastside stations — East Base and Bellevue Base — aren’t yet in place with Puget Sound Energy.

Part of the issue, Poon said, is utilities want to know how much electricity Metro needs at each station, but that’s hard to know since battery-electric bus technology is still developing.

Christina Donegan, Puget Sound Energy’s spokesperson, said in an interview that a larger concern is the load on the energy grid from the growing use of electric vehicles coupled with “significant clean energy mandates” from state regulators.

“It’s something we think about every single day,” said Donegan. “We’re going to do everything in our power” to supply the energy needed for the region’s growing electric demands.

Siobhan Doherty, Seattle City Light’s power supply manager, said the utility hadn’t seen demand on its power grid change in years — until recently. She says the demand is coming from transportation and building electrification. Now, the utility plans to ask state regulators to approve a plan to look for more sources of energy.

“It is going to be challenging because there are a lot of utilities looking for new resources,” Doherty said, adding that Seattle City Light’s energy portfolio has no fossil fuel sources.

Aside from limits on Metro’s power supply, there are also questions about where it will get its new buses. There are only two manufacturers that can build the type of battery-electric bus Metro needs: American Flyer and Gillig. Three years ago, there were five such companies, which manufactured a total of 504 battery-electric buses in 2022.

Metro, one of the nation’s largest transit agencies, set its goal to go fully electric in 2017. But its move to a greener fleet began well before then. It started using diesel-hybrid buses in 2004, the first U.S. transit agency to do so, and ran its last diesel-only bus in 2020. In 2016, Metro bought its first 11 battery-electric buses from Proterra, which filed for bankruptcy in August 2023, and in 2017 purchased 174 electric trolleys.

Metro began service of 40 battery-electric buses from New Flyer in 2022. However, half of its New Flyer coaches were out of service on any given day this March, according to the auditor. The agency has purchased 89 battery-electric buses from Gillig, scheduled for delivery in 2026.

Beyond all this is the overall demand for battery-electric buses. Many of the nation’s large transit agencies have goals to transition to zero emission fleets, including in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston, Portland and Washington, D.C. In November 2023, the American Public Transportation Association estimated that 60,000 battery-electric buses are needed by North American transit agencies by 2035.

The push to go green is being fueled in part by the Federal Transit Administration, which in 2022 created the Low- or No-Emission Grant Program with $5.6 billion going toward transit agencies to electrify their fleets. Last year, Metro got $33.5 million from the program to electrify 27 bus routes.

This federal investment is part of the $1 trillion infrastructure law passed by Congress in 2021, which revised the Buy America Act requiring U.S. transit agencies to purchase buses manufactured in the U.S. It’s this rule that limits Metro to two manufacturers, while European transit agencies have 35 manufacturers to choose from.

In 2017, Metro had its largest ridership in recent years, with more than 123 million boardings recorded. Like with all transit agencies, the pandemic hurt Metro’s ridership, and boardings plunged to 51 million in 2021. In 2023, that number bounced up to nearly 75 million, making Metro the tenth-largest transit agency in the U.S.