The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) is developing a Zero-Emission Bus Transition Plan Guidebook for the National Transit Institute (NTI) to support the organization’s goals of educating transit agencies on the methods of proper transition planning. Moving to a fully, or even a majority zero-emission bus (ZEB) fleet requires special planning and consideration of the elements that are unique to ZEBs, such as range limitations, higher vehicle costs, charging and/or hydrogen fueling, maintenance requirements, and infrastructure needs. Although these challenges are significant, a ZEB transition plan can help agencies overcome these difficulties, and a plan offers substantial benefits to one-off deployments.
The guidebook’s format will help users quickly identify the necessary steps, key stakeholders, and common pitfalls of transition planning so they can make the most of their deployment. The user-friendly format allows users with different interests or responsibilities to easily find relevant information for each phase of planning. The Guidebook categorizes ZEB transition planning into nine sequential phases that follow the recommended ZEB Transition Planning Methodology steps. These steps are a complete set of analyses agencies may use to inform the planning of the conversion of their fleets to zero-emission technologies.
The guidebook will outline the entire transition planning process following CTE’s standard methodology, which encompasses nine key phases: Planning & Initiation, Requirements & Data Collection, Service Assessment, Fleet Assessment, Fuel Assessment, Maintenance Assessment, Facilities Assessment, Total Cost of Ownership Assessment, and, finally, the creation of the ZEB Transition Plan itself.
