If a school bus starts and there’s no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound? There’s no way to know, but if it’s one of the new electric buses the Park City School District is purchasing with funds they received from a federal grant, it will at least be a lot less noisy.
“We were able to secure some grant funding for a couple of electric buses, the first additions to our fleet,” district chief operating officer Michael Tanner said.
He said that, for quite a while, the district has been looking to make their bussing operations more sustainable with reduced emissions.
“We started with adding propane buses to our fleet a few years ago, and after several attempts for applications to secure funding for electric buses, we were finally successful,” Tanner said. “The (Environmental Protection Agency) granted us about $400,000 to subsidize the purchase of two new school buses, which will be delivered to us this coming spring.”
Kelly Watkins, EPA District 8 chief of staff explained the benefits the new vehicles will provide for students, the school district and the community at large.
“One of our top priorities and something we can all agree on is protecting children’s health, and that’s one of the reasons that the Clean School Bus Program is so exciting for (the) EPA and for all of our partners,” she said. “They deliver triple benefits. They’re better for children’s health because kids won’t be breathing diesel emissions that can be really damaging for children’s lungs as they develop.”
The buses, she said, are also overall better for the environment.
“Transportation is a major contributor to air pollution, and with air quality issues like we experience in a lot of urban areas and surrounding them, including in mountain rural communities, having reduced emissions coming from electric or clean school buses is a real benefit for the environment,” Watkins said. “They’re also better for the bottom line. The upfront investment in clean school buses ends up yielding benefits over the lifetime of buses including reduced fuel costs and reduced maintenance costs as well.”
Another electric bus benefit that Watkins said is often overlooked is the noise level, which is greatly reduced when there’s not a diesel engine in the mix. She said the lower volume can help drivers keep passengers under control during their trips.
According to Lisa Burr, the grants and incentives section manager at the Utah Division of Air Quality said the reduced noise can also prove beneficial to kids with special needs who can have issues with a regular bus’s loud volume.
Kim Shelley, the executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, also praised the new vehicles.
“One of the greatest environmental challenges in Utah is our air quality,” she said.
She added that while many associate air quality concerns with the more populated portions of the state, the continuing population growth has expanded many of those worries to the Wasatch Back. She identified diesel emissions as a large contributor to air quality issues.
“We estimate it will be about an annual reduction of over 43 tons of emissions,” she said of the new buses. “I really want to applaud Park City School district for being so forward thinking. We know that the best way to intervene in an environmental issue is prevention.”
Watkins said Park City School District isn’t the first in the state to receive funding for electric buses from the federal government.
“This is one of the multiple batches of funding that’s going out thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure law, which included $5 billion over five years to help deploy clean school buses,” Watkins said. “These two buses that Park City will be getting will mark the 23rd and 24th clean school buses in the state of Utah through this bill funding.”
According to Tanner, the district will be responsible for $450,000 for both of the buses after taking the grant funds into account. They will be implemented into the schools’ regular bus cycle.