When Twin Transit started seriously looking into adding electric buses into its fleet a few years ago, people with the transit authority encouraged Chehalis-Centralia Transportation Cooperative Director Gibb Kingsley to do the same.
Now, with diesel prices rising to nearly $6 a gallon and mechanics working hard to keep some aging school buses on the road, the co-op is looking into the feasibility of replacing some of its diesel school buses with electric versions.
“When you’re running older buses, they break down more and there’s more emissions involved, and there’s more staff work just to maintain keeping that bus on the road,” said Kingsley in response to a question asked by Student Board Representative Lucy Nowicki at a Centralia School Board meeting last month.
Electric school buses would require significantly less mechanical and repair work to upkeep, would reduce the co-op's emissions output and save the district money on fuel costs, Kingsley said.
The co-op is primarily considering a full-sized, 40-foot electric school bus model from the manufacturer Blue Bird, which currently costs about $370,000 — double the cost of a standard diesel bus, according to Kingsley.
The co-op is looking into grants that would cover at least half of the cost of purchasing the electric bus. In some instances, those grants will cover the full cost of the bus plus the charging infrastructure, Kingsley said.
“So, the bus is about twice as much, but the grants are covering a minimum of 50%, so you’re into it for what you would buy for a normal school bus,” he told The Chronicle.
Kingsley is hoping to apply for two grants over the course of this year.
The co-op provides transportation services to the Centralia and Chehalis school districts, as well as “a robust shop of operations” including training and mechanical support to 11 other schools in the area.
In total, the co-op buses transport over 3,500 students daily, according to Kingsley.
Despite ongoing challenges with bus driver recruitment, the co-op has been able to maintain its regular routes due to the two-tier routing schedule it implemented at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The bus driver shortage is a national epidemic that has been growing every year. The pandemic only increased issues as far as finding individuals who can do this. … School districts all over the nation are struggling with not having enough staff to perform the job,” said Kingsley at the March 25 school board meeting. “We saw all of that coming before the pandemic, which is why we went with the decision to go with two-tier routing.”
Two-tier routing, a routing system where bus drivers operate two routes back-to-back, has allowed the co-op to successfully operate all of its routes with fewer staff while also keeping buses less crowded and separating elementary students from secondary students, Kingsley said.
“We had community support to switch over to two-tier routing,” said Kingsley. “This is our first year of really pulling that off. We started last year when the pandemic started and we weren’t fully busing, so this is our first year of really trying to run that model, and so far it’s working glitches out but it’s been working relatively well for us,” he said, later adding: “This year, a success for our program is we’ve canceled only two routes over the course of the entire school year for one day, so everyone pulls together to get the job done and I want to say that’s our biggest success.”
That success is largely due to the dedicated team of drivers and co-op staff that keep the buses running, Kingsley said.
“I can’t think of a department that’s been more flexible and more team- and service-oriented than our transportation department,” said Superintendent Lisa Grant during the March 25 school board meeting. “And with the additional challenges of shortage of staff and other pieces, anything we’ve asked of them — and we’ve asked some pretty big asks — they have said ‘yes, we’ll figure it out.’ They have done it and that is due to leadership and the teamwork (Kingsley) has built there that’s making it happen.”
