The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) partnered with the Hawai’i Department of Transportation (HDOT) for a successful award under the Federal Transit Administration’s 2018 Low or No Emission Vehicle Program (Low-No). HDOT partnered with three counties for this project: Hawai’i, Kaua’i, and Maui. The grant provides funding to purchase and deploy one battery electric bus (BEB) and supporting charging infrastructure for each of the three counties. HDOT has also provided funding for a transition plan to be conducted for each county in order to determine how to transition to 100% zero-emission fleets.
In 2021, HDOT was awarded another grant under the Low-No Program, which will provide funding to purchase and deploy an additional three BEBs per county along with the supporting charging infrastructure. The 2018 and 2021 Low-No grants have been combined into one project for a total procurement of twelve BEBs across the three counties. HDOT engaged CTE to manage the 2018 project, which provided funds for CTE to conduct project management for the additional 2021 grant.
CTE completed route, rate, and charge modeling for each county. The results of the modeling were used to inform the bus and charger specifications included in a joint Request for Proposals (RFP) for all three counties for procurement of 35’ BEBs. The RFP was advertised December 2022 and closed in March 2023. The evaluation of the proposals resulted in GILLIG being awarded. The contract with GILLIG has been finalized and bus delivery is currently expected to begin Q2 of 2025.
For the transition plans, CTE is currently working on the fuel, maintenance, and infrastructure assessments for each county. The fuel assessment is being conducted to calculate daily fuel consumption and projected annual fueling costs, and the goal of the maintenance assessment is to analyze labor and materials costs for zero-emission bus maintenance over the transition period. The infrastructure assessment will help define requirements for the charging infrastructure.
HDOT was successful again in 2022, winning another Low-No award on behalf of the counties. This grant will provide funding for the procurement of six fuel cell electric buses and hydrogen infrastructure for Hawai’i County, as well as four BEBs each and associated charging infrastructure for Maui and Kaua’i counties. Once under contract, CTE will assist the counties with this additional Low-No project by continuing to utilize CTE’s Smart Deployment methodology.
