Greenlink, the Greenville County bus service, is getting ready to buy its first battery-powered bus, but there’s no guarantee it will be made by Proterra, the electric bus manufacturer with a factory in Greenville.
Separately, the city of Greenville has hired a new director of public transportation to run Greenlink starting on Monday.
Matt Efird, interim transportation director for the city, which operates Greenlink for the Greenville Transit Authority, said the bus service would use $300,000 appropriated by the General Assembly as a “local match” for the purchase of one electric bus and associated charging equipment.
The balance of the total purchase price — expected to be about $1.3 million — will come from federal funds, he said.
Efird said members of Greenlink’s staff recently visited Proterra’s factory along Interstate 85 in Greenville and rode one of the company’s electric transit buses on Greenlink routes as part of an evaluation.
Greenlink will also evaluate electric buses from two other manufacturers — New Flyer Industries of Canada and BYD Company Ltd. of China — as part of a competitive bidding process, he said.
Efird said Greenlink expects to buy just one 35-foot electric bus for now “to kind of get our feet wet in the electric bus world.”
He said a transit agency such as Greenlink typically has to wait a year to 15 months to receive a bus after ordering one, so Greenlink likely won’t be able to deploy the electric bus until early 2018.
Efird said Greenlink is thinking about using the electric bus on a route that runs between downtown and Simpsonville or one that connects Haywood Mall with hospitals along Patewood Drive and Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research.
Greenlink’s move to buy its first electric bus comes more than six years after Proterra moved to Greenville from Golden, Colo., as a startup company.
Proterra, which later relocated its headquarters to Burlingame, Calif., has long said it would like to see one of its buses operating on the streets of Greenville as a demonstration for potential customers visiting its factory.
Greenlink over the years has applied numerous times for federal funds to buy electric buses but has never been successful in securing any grants.
The Clemson area’s bus service, called Catbus, already operates six electric buses in Seneca that were made by Proterra in Greenville. In addition, Catbus recently secured nearly $4 million in federal funds to buy seven more electric buses.
The $300,000 that Greenlink intends to use as the local match to buy its first electric bus will come from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Lawmakers, led by Rep. Bruce Bannister of Greenville, House majority leader, and Rep. Brian White of Anderson, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, put the money into the DHEC budget and designated it for air quality improvements.
White made it clear, however, during comments on the House floor that the money was intended to help the city of Greenville buy an electric bus or buses.
Efird said the federal portion of the bus purchase price could come out of grant money that is already part of GTA’s current finance plan. Or, he said, GTA may decide to apply for other federal money available through a Federal Transit Authority program designed to promote low-emission or no-emission vehicles.
Starting Monday, Greenlink will be run by Gary Shepard, the city’s newly hired director of public transportation.
He replaces Mark Rickards, who left the job four months ago to become a mass transit executive in Ocean City, Maryland.
Shepard comes to Greenville from Massachusetts, where he ran transit authorities in Berkshire and Pioneer Valley, according to his resume. He also worked as economic development director in Springfield.
Shepard said he hopes to play a role in making Greenville’s bus system better.
“It seems like there’s a willingness to improve the transportation network and I think I can be a part of that,” he said.
Shepard said he views transportation as part of economic development.
“Every time we provide transportation for someone to get employment or for a student to do an internship in downtown Greenville, we’re adding to the economic vitality of the region,” he said.
