All-electric bus system for Montreal by 2025?
Each bus would cost nearly $1M
The STM today announced plans to have its bus network go completely electric by 2025 — and it’s going to cost millions of dollars.
"It’s $700,000 per bus with all the equipment and the installation you need in the garage … to recharge the bus," said STM chairman Michel Labrecque.
Labrecque said that, as it stands, the transit authority doesn’t have the money to carry out its plans to eventually replace all diesel buses with electric ones, and perhaps even bring back a trolley system.
Still, he said the STM has just come out of a two-year feasibility study for electric buses linked to wires.
Karel Mayrand, Quebec director of the David Suzuki Foundation, said it’s a step in the right direction, even if the STM doesn’t have the cash to fulfill its dreams.
"Everything that will reduce our consumption of oil is a good thing, and it’s a good thing also from an economic perspective," he said.
Mayrand added that the Quebec government should step up to front some of the cost of the new system, instead of unloading it on Montreal taxpayers.
"[The STM would need] a billion dollars a year in addition to current financing for transit," he said.