News

Electric Buses in MCPS

By Franky Rodriguez

Montgomery County Public Schools recently announced that they would replace 326 of its diesel school buses with electric buses over the course of the next four years.

This announcement comes after the Montgomery County Board of Education approved a $1,312,500 four year contract with HET MCPS LLC, a subsidiary of the Massachusetts based company, Highland Electric Transportation, Inc.

The subsidiary was created for the purpose of the electric bus project. The lifetime contract cost of all the 326 electric buses will be $168,684,990. The electric buses replace the current fleet of school buses that the county currently utilizes.

MCPS expects to cover the cost of the contract with the saved funds that would have originally been utilized to purchase, maintain, and operate the diesel school buses. The current set of school buses that the county currently uses are all diesel-powered.

On the average school day, the county reports that around 17,000 gallons of diesel fuel are used to power the school buses. Diesel school buses are notorious for emitting excessive amounts of greenhouse gases. The electrical school buses will solve this issue by not having any tailpipe emissions.

“MCPS has been working to increase sustainable practices in all aspects of our school system operations,” stated Jack Smith, MCPS Superintendent. “It’s critical that we be good stewards of our natural resources and do our part to protect the environment.”

The County plans to maintain twenty-five of the electric school buses at the depot in Bethesda starting in the 2021-2022 academic school year. One bus will operate in each cluster. MCPS will receive 61 more electric school buses in the fall of 2022, and they will receive 61 extra buses over the course of the two years that follow.