The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) partnered with the City of Fort Collins for a successful award under the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Low or No Emission Vehicle Program. CTE is working with the City of Fort Collins’ transit agency, Transfort, to deploy eight GILLIG battery electric buses (BEBs). CTE will provide limited technical consultation on the subjects of bus procurement and infrastructure design and build and will produce a final report to be delivered to the FTA.
Under a separate project, CTE prepared a zero-emission fleet transition plan for Transfort. CTE analyzed the results from route and vehicle modeling done in the second part of the zero-emission fleet transition plan to evaluate different charging scenarios and develop an energy consumption model. Transfort will use this model as a guide for making operational decisions.
The first two BEBs were delivered in April 2024. CTE conducted tests to validate route performance, auxiliary/HVAC load, regenerative braking, charging and battery capacity, and driver efficiency. CTE worked with Transfort during a key performance indicators (KPI) planning workshop to create BEB program objectives, reporting requirements, and establish the data collection process. After the buses enter revenue service, CTE will collect and analyze operational data through quarterly KPI reports for 12 months. Revenue Service Deployment is expected in the fourth quarter of 2024.
