Utah Transit Authority Low-No 2021 Electrified Microtransit Service with Vans

Location:
Utah
Service Area:
Smart Deployment
Duration:
May 2022 - Jun. 2024
Client:
Utah Transit Authority
Senior Project Manager:
Todd Walton
Project Manager:
Leslie Eudy

The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) partnered with the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) for a successful award under the Federal Transit Administration’s 2021 Low or No Emission Vehicle Program (Low-No). CTE worked with UTA to deploy ten Ford E-Transit vans into microtransit service in Tooele, Utah. The goal of this project was to provide an equivalent service with electric vehicles that leverages the successful deployment of UTA’s microtransit service elsewhere in its service territory.

CTE assisted UTA in developing a strategy for charging the electric vehicles to meet the microtransit service requirements. UTA expects to operate the vehicles up to 200 miles per day and will need a flexible mid-day charging strategy to provide this service. UTA has installed ten Level 2 chargers at the depot where the vehicles park overnight and two ABB 150 kW plug-in chargers at another location for the vehicles to access while in service.

CTE estimated the expected fuel economy and range of the vehicles under various operating conditions as well as the charging requirements necessary to meet UTA’s service needs. CTE developed a framework for determining the sensitivity of vehicle performance to different conditions, a critical piece of planning to deploy electric vehicles in on-demand service rather than fixed route service. CTE ultimately determined that under most scenarios the vehicles will not require mid-day charging, but under challenging operating conditions, drivers will need to use the fast chargers during their lunch break.

CTE evaluated the performance of the vehicles after the ABB 150 kW chargers were commissioned to measure the performance of the electric vehicles and chargers. CTE analyzed data from October 2023 through January 2024 and summarized the performance results in a final report. This project is complete.