IA: Four new electric buses will be rolling on Davenport streets later this year

Davenport transit riders will see four new battery-powered electric buses on the streets later this year.

The new buses, funded almost entirely from a federal grant awarded to the city in 2022, will replace four diesel buses from 2003. Davenport’s fleet has 21 buses in operation.

The transition will reduce the costs for fuel by about 30% per mile and prevent an estimated 147 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, said Jeff Wolf, Davenport transit operations supervisor. The buses also do not need oil changes.

The Federal Transit Administration awarded Davenport about $4.8 million in a bus low- and no-emission grant to go toward four new battery electric buses and three charging stations. The city, MidAmerican Energy and the Regional Development Authority all supplied funding for a local match for the grant.

Davenport had applied for a grant for three years before receiving the award in 2022, Wolf said.

The grant program expanded under the Joe Biden administration with funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which distributed about $1.66 billion across the U.S. to transit operations for buses and bus facilities.

Riders can expect to see the new buses on the streets in November, Wolf said.

Last month, the city tested the buses’ battery life by driving the buses with sand-filled garbage cans to simulate the weight of people on a bus. And this past week, Gillig, the company that makes the buses, trained drivers on-site.

The exact date the buses will be in service depends on the company inspecting and giving final approval for the charging infrastructure.

The new buses are taller, but otherwise look almost identical to the rest of the fleet. The batteries that power the buses are in three locations — on top of the bus, underneath the bus and in the back.

Because of that extra height, the new buses will not be on the routes with low bridge clearance, such as Route 4, which goes underneath the railroad bridge at Harrison and Brady streets.

Riders will also notice a quieter and smoother ride, Wolf said.

“There won’t be as much jerkiness due to the internal combustion engine,” Wolf said. “They also will be significantly quieter. While we don’t expect them to be so quiet that people won’t be able to hear them coming, they will be noticeably less loud than the diesel buses.”

Without the four diesel buses from 2003, the oldest buses in the city’s fleet will be from 2011.

With the city’s current diesel-powered fleet, the cost per mile ranges from 31 cents at less strenuous use to 71 cents at more strenuous use to operate the buses. For electric buses, it’s between 23 and 40 cents per mile.

Initially, the city hoped to get the buses on the streets in 2024, but backlogs in shipping parts caused delays, Wolf said.

Transit study coming

A study looking at transit needs for Davenport, Bettendorf and LeClaire will inform future changes to public transportation on the Iowa side of the Quad-Cities.

A $125,000 state grant and contributions from each city will fund the study, to be done by contractor AECOM, which Wolf said has done studies in the Beloit and Rockford areas. The goals of the study, Wolf said, are to target route expansion where the city needs it most and receive public feedback on where routes are needed.

The last study, Wolf said, was done in 2016.

“For Davenport, we know that means the northwest area — Kraft, Amazon, Sterilite, Fair Oaks area — where there’s lots of jobs that people need to get to; the Ridgeview area that we don’t have a ton of service to as well,” Wolf said. “Bettendorf knows that they need more service out to their TBK Bank area. Both those areas didn’t exist 10 years ago, so this is a great time for us to start planning toward the future.”

Ridership has rebounded to 2019 levels, Wolf said.

To gather public input, city staff will do in-person interviews on buses and at bus stations as well as post a survey online. Each city will also hold a public meeting. And those involved with the study will reach out to stakeholder organizations that have a lot of people who use the public transit system, such as large employers, local colleges and universities, organizations such as Humility of Mary and Vera French, and health care providers.

City leaders will also discuss connection points between cities, and what connections can be improved.

Wolf said he expected a presentation to the city council with recommendations in February or March of 2027.

“We want to pull as much information as we can and then let public input guide what the next steps looking forward should look like,” Wolf said.

Asked about the longevity of the batteries, Wolf said mass transit buses funded by the federal government must last at least 12 years, otherwise the company must pay back the difference. Gillig has guaranteed at least 12 years or 600,000 miles, whichever comes first.

“As far as the batteries are concerned, we feel pretty good about the lifetime of them,” Wolf said. “If there does need to be a six-year swap out, that is included in the price that we have paid for them and then Gillig just takes the batteries back.”

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