PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It was out with the old and in with the new at SEPTA headquarters in Center City on Thursday, as the transit agency retired its last all-diesel bus and introduced a new “green” bus.
The roar of all-diesel SEPTA buses is a sound people have heard less and less in recent years. Now it is no more. “Our whole fleet was diesel at one point and we’ve been systematically changing them out,” said Emily Yates, SEPTA’s chief innovation officer.
Yates says that while most of the 1,400-bus fleet is composed of diesel hybrid models, the transit agency is launching a pilot program of new hydrogen fuel cell electric buses this fall.
“The first part of the process is that we test it out, kind of play with it before we see whether any adjustments are to be made before we finalize the order for the remaining ten,” she told KYW Newsradio.
Another option is using battery-powered electric buses. However, the agency sidelined 25 battery-electric buses two years ago because of cracks in their frames. One even caught fire. Yates says SEPTA hasn’t decided on adding more battery buses yet as it works to make the fleet greener.
“The future is still to be determined. We’re trying to be data-driven,” she said. There's a lot of innovation happening in batteries right now, so that could really impact how battery-electric buses look on the street. So we don’t know.”
Yates says SEPTA is still committed to having an entirely zero-emission bus fleet by 2040.