CA: B-Line launches electric buses alongside rebrand

The Butte County Association of Governments launched B-Line’s new electric vehicles alongside a rebrand on Wednesday.

Five of the new electric buses were introduced to the city on Clean Air Day, which meant free fares for all citizens. B-Line coincided with the launch of the new electric vehicles with a rebrand, including a new logo and website.

“Our theme right now is ‘Building a Better B-Line,'” BCAG Transportation Analyst Amy White said. “We’re naming each of our services so everybody will be able to differentiate which service they’re looking for.”

Along with the standard buses, B-Line will also introduce two more electric vehicle lines: B-Line Plus and B- Line Flex.

B-Line Plus is a rebrand of the existing paratransit service. B- Line Flex is a new “microtransit” service that White said will be introduced around springtime. White also added that they have their sights set on creating a Chico to Sacramento segment, which would be called B- Line Link.

B-Line began the launch with only five buses, which are only running in Chico for now, and White said the initial launch had a limited number of vehicles to see how they perform.

“It’s not a trial period, because we’re not getting rid of them, but we just want to see how they work and see what we can use them for,” she said.

BCAG Executive Director Andy Newsum said that they are trying to keep them under their range of 150 miles for now by keeping the buses in Chico, but said that they will eventually go farther.

“We want to first run them in Chico and make sure they deliver 150 miles or less per run between charges and see how they hold,” he said. “We’ll go farther if we get to a comfort level that we can go farther, and that might be some of the outer lines in Chico.”

The launch of the new electric vehicles comes after a 2018 regulation from the California Air Resources Board, which set a statewide goal for public transit agencies to transition to 100 percent zero-emission bus fleets by 2040.

Newsum said that while the clear benefit of switching to electric vehicles is that fossil fuels are no longer being burned, there is still a footprint when it comes to building batteries, as well as what happens to the batteries when they are no longer operational.

“Every technology has its pluses and minuses. For us, we’re going to be trading buying electrons for buying gasoline,” Newsum said. “Is that going to be good for us? We’ll see.”

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