The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) partnered with the City of Lawrence (Lawrence) for a successful award under the Federal Transit Administration’s 2021 Low or No Emission Vehicle Program. Under this award, Lawrence Transit will replace two diesel buses from its fleet with two 40’ 686kWh GILLIG battery electric buses (BEBS). The BEBs will eliminate the emissions that would otherwise be generated by diesel buses and be harmful to Lawrence Transit riders, Lawrence residents, and University of Kansas (KU) students and faculty.
This is the second phase of the “Electrify Lawrence” Transit BEB deployment project. The first phase included the procurement and installation of ChargePoint charging equipment and the successful deployment of five GILLIG BEBs that began service at the start of KU’s Fall 2022 semester. The goal of this Phase 2 project is to successfully deploy two additional 40’ GILLIG BEBs into revenue service and complete infrastructure installation and commissioning of a ChargePoint charger.
CTE is continuing to work directly with Lawrence to manage the electric bus deployment project and provide technical support and expertise in route modeling and bus and charger equipment procurement processes. CTE is also maintaining close collaboration with project partners including the KU, Transdev, GILLIG, and ChargePoint to ensure the project’s deployment plan is appropriate, timely, and contributes to Lawrence Transit’s ability to successfully maintain the BEB fleet.
In January 2024, both 686kWh GILLIG BEBs were delivered to Lawrence. After delivery, CTE traveled to Lawrence and conducted onsite validation testing of the buses and provided a summary of the results to Lawrence. As of May 2024, CTE has been reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs) for the two new BEBs. CTE will conduct KPI reporting for one year before closing out the project in Q2 2025.
