OC Transpo cancels plan to buy 60-foot electric buses for now

An electric zero-emission OC Transpo bus is seen in this undated image. (Peter Szperling/CTV News Ottawa)

A planned expansion of OC Transpo's zero-emission bus (ZEB) fleet is expected to be delayed and the city won’t be getting any 60-foot electric buses, according to a new report.

A report prepared for the Oct. 10 Transit Commission meeting says that while some new buses are expected to be delivered to Ottawa between now and the end of the year, many more will not arrive until the first quarter of 2025.

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"New Flyer's lead bus, or first bus of the order, is currently in production and is expected to be delivered in October 2024," the report says. "New Flyer has informed the City of a 1 – 2-month production delay impacting 16 of the 22 buses originally scheduled for Q4 2024, that should now arrive in Q1 2025."

Four Nova buses that were also expected to arrive in the fourth quarter of 2024 have also been delayed to the first quarter of 2025, with more pushed back into 2026.

"OC Transpo will receive four buses from NOVA in Q1 2025 with the remaining 47 expected to be delivered in Q4 2025 through to Q1 2026," staff said.

According to documents filed for the March 18 Transit Commission meeting, the city was supposed to receive 26 zero-emission buses in last quarter of 2024 – 22 from New Flyer and four from Nova – and 76 new buses in the latter half of 2025. The new timeline extends the delivery of the first 26 buses to March 2025 at the latest and now includes 80 buses expected between September 2025 and January 2026.

The report also states that the plan no longer includes 60-foot zero-emission buses, instead procuring only 40-foot buses instead.

"Due to the current market limitations of high-capacity electric buses, the ZEB Executive Steering Committee has directed Phase 1 of the ZEB program to shift from a mix of 196 40-foot electric buses and 154 60-foot articulated electric buses, to procure exclusively 40-foot buses," the report states. "The Executive Steering Committee also took into consideration the positive results of the 40-foot electric bus pilot, proving their abilities to meet all of the City’s operational and service delivery requirements."

Stittsville Coun. Glen Gower, chair of the Transit Commission, told Newstalk 580 CFRA's Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron that the plan to have 60-foot electric buses isn't completely off the table, but it's not as accessible right now because those buses are not as widely available.

"Staff have said there's a risk because of the availability of electric 60-foot buses in the marketplace. And so, there's a few ways we can deal with that. We can purchase more 40-foots instead of 60-foot or we can decide to procure some diesel buses," he said. 

"It's a timing challenge because we've got some longer 60-foot high-capacity buses that are going to reach the end of their lifespan, where we don't want to keep them on the road because they become more expensive to maintain and more issues with reliability. If we get to the point where we're not satisfied that there are electric buses that are high capacity, that we may have to look at diesel as an interim measure or look at 40-foot."

Ottawa City Council approved a nearly $1-billion plan in 2021 to replace the full OC Transpo fleet with zero-emission buses by 2036. The city says each electric bus saves 25,000 litres of fuel per year. Currently, four zero-emission buses are in the transit fleet.

According to city data, the four pilot buses collectively are approaching 650,000 km on the road and have been exceeding their month mileage targets.

The current electrical service at OC Transpo's garage at 1500 St. Laurent Blvd. has adequate capacity to charge a total of approximately 30 electric buses. Work on Phase 1 of the St. Laurent South Garage civil infrastructure project was substantially completed in July and Phase 2 is in the design stage. Once both the civil infrastructure and electrical infrastructure projects are completed — slated for early 2026 — the south garage will have the capacity to park and charge 142 electric buses, staff say. Improvements are also planned for the north garage and a new parking structure at 1500 St. Laurent Blvd., giving charging capacity for at least 326 buses by the end of 2027.

According to the timeline in the report, 350 zero-emission buses are expected to be delivered to the city by September 2027. 

Gower said despite the delay at the end of this year, the plan to have 350 electric buses by 2027 remains on track.

"It's just a slight delay in terms of what we were expecting to get by the end of this year."