With massive investments to electrify public transit, the Government of Canada's pandemic budget can expedite projects to the benefit of Canadians

April 15th 2021

With massive investments to electrify public transit, the federal government’s pandemic budget is the opportunity to expedite projects to the benefit of Canadians

Dr. Josipa Petrunic is CEO of The Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium, the non-profit responsible for the development and commercialization of low-carbon transit technologies.

The federal government finally did it.

On March 4, I joined federal ministers Catherine McKenna and Fran?ois-Philippe Champagne, along with Ehren Cory, the new CEO of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and Mayor Jim Watson for the announcement of Canada’s most innovative investment in public transit ever: $2.75b over five years to electrify the transit fleet across this great nation with zero-emission battery and hydrogen fuel cell electric buses.

It’s a career-crowning moment for Minister McKenna, who has been a champion in her own government for the magnitude of funding needed to build back better and greener through infrastructure projects that directly support the mobility needs of Canadians nation-wide.

Unlike electric cars, which households buy one-by-one, transit fleets operate in stepwise functions with large procurements in big chunks.

A growing Canadian industry

The industry has grown rapidly over the past five years. Starting with just a few dozens of pilot buses on the roads by the end of 2018 in Canada, the industry had deployed nearly 100 zero-emission buses (ZEBs) across Canada by the end of 2020 with another 250 promised in short-order by fleets and cities. According to our Canadian ZEB Database? at CUTRIC, as of April 2021, the number stands at more than 500 ZEBs formally confirmed for procurement, procured, in commissioning or on roads and fully deployed in Canada.

Unlike electric cars, which households buy one-by-one, transit fleets operate in stepwise functions with large procurements in big chunks.

By the end of 2021, another 1,000 or more ZEBs are likely to be announced for purchase by large agencies led nationally by the Toronto Transit Commission, TransLink, Société de transport de Montréal and Edmonton Transit with smaller agencies like Brampton, York Region, and Laval launching their own substantive deployments in the dozens. Cities like London, Guelph, Quebec City, Winnipeg, and Oakville have also lined up with their public visions to procure.

The funding announcement made by McKenna is meant to get to 5,000 ZEBs committed over the next five years, about 30 percent of the national fleet. That’s at least 750,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases emissions eliminated annually from direct pollution by buses.

Our team at the Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) has also calculated that for every $1 billion dispersed in this industry, the federal government is supporting approximately 260,000 direct full-time and part-time jobs in the transit, utility and zero-emissions bus manufacturing and supply chain industry today, and helping to create between 30,000 and 98,000 direct and indirect jobs, if including temporary construction jobs.

Transformational benefits

With billions committed, what work is left for the federal government to harness the transformational benefits of transit innovation?

The answer is simple: smart zero-emissions bus feasibility and roll out programming. It sounds boring, but it’s more important that you might realise.

Electrification is complicated. Really complicated. It is not just a different bus powertrain. It’s a complete energy system overhaul for transit agencies. Battery and hydrogen fuel cell electric buses need new low-power and high-power charging at depots with energy storage devices and smart charging software. This technology manages energy demands and keeps costs low by making sure buses don’t power up when the price is high and they don’t power on all at the same time driving up demand charges needlessly.

Transit needs robotic arms installed on ceilings that drop down to charge buses so drivers don’t need to touch the equipment. They need high-powered charging systems from 450kW to 600 kW (or more) installed on routes and on our city streets to deliver energy to buses throughout the day. They need new property ownership or management rights so they can install all the electrical cabinets that go with chargers underground or above ground, but somewhere nearby. They need green hydrogen produced locally, which there isn’t much of today, and they need it now. They also need new renewable natural gas (RNG) supplies to make their current compressed natural gas buses zero-emissions, too.

And they need new college technicians graduating yesterday so they can hire them now to operate these high-powered pieces of moving electronic equipment.

This is all new DNA in the transit bloodline. The federal funding of $2.75 Billion needs to cover the costs of all of this complexity -- but that’s only the start.

The government must know that in spending $2.75 Billion in a short period of time a lot of money can be wasted, accidentally. It’s hard to know what an agency needs to buy without detailed and precise modelling and predictions of performance.

Avoiding wastage through planning: just how far will that electric bus go?

To prevent wastage and unintentional over- or under-buying of assets that don’t serve the needs of the agency properly, the government must support (and require) smart roll out planning as a pre-measure. Planning for zero-emissions buses and their allied energy infrastructure means feasibility studies driven by physics and mathematically-based modelling with lifecycle economic calculations that tabulate (based on technologies available today) how these zero-emissions buses will perform in local communities, whether and when they will run out of energy while in-service, how much energy they need onboard at the start of day and pumped into the vehicle throughout the day.

They need to know ahead of time what the electricity or hydrogen bill will look like compared to their current diesel bills and whether their routes need to be redesigned to match the limitations of the technology, before they buy, so they aren’t left waiting for years for the technology to “catch up”.

Smart feasibility studies like these may sound boring, but they are necessary.

Our organization, the Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC), has spent dozens of labour years in collective intellectual power since 2019 developing the non-profit RoutE.i? 2.0 tool with transit members to do just that. It’s a lot of math, physics, GIS and smarts. These types of transparent feasibility tools are needed. We’ve used it to run tabulations for cities like Toronto, London, Burlington, and Quebec City in Canada and in Riverside, Orange County, Elk Grove and Santa Monica in California. We’re starting now with York Region and Mississauga, and many more. This non-profit technical work has helped transit walk into this complexity with eyes wide open.

Smart feasibility studies like these may sound boring, but they are necessary. They will secure tax efficient and evidence-based procurements saving Canadians tens of millions of dollars in the first few years.

The pandemic will subside. Cities will return. Canadians will be better prepared next time a zoonotic illness sweeps across our nation and infiltrates our transit systems. We will know better in the future how to keep transit riders and drivers safe and healthy so they can help keep the economy humming. Transit will be back. But it needs to be better -- faster, smarter, cheaper and greener for riders and all Canadians. Money helps. But smart planning will ultimately get us there.

To watch the whole announcement live click here – and find excerpts of my comments below.

Funding Transit is an Act of Feminism

“This is what happens when you get a woman as a Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and a woman as a Minister of Finance: you get feminism in action in the form of great public transit innovation that protects the climate while liberating women. Women, who by the way, make-up the majority of transit riders in Canada today. We are giving them the better mobility they deserve to get back to work safely and securely to revive this economy post-pandemic.”

Transit Transforms Communities

“I have to say emphatically how transformational this funding is from a technological standpoint and from a transit operational standpoint. This is like knocking down the entire structure and rebuilding one that looks completely different moving forward. This is complex, with so much new technology, and transit needs this support to make this transformation. It is very difficult, and this will help the industry build a better Canada.”

The Bus is Ready to Leave the Station

“We are ready, we are roaring to go and there is a pent-up appetite for this and the job growth and creation is allied to the low-carbon economy that we all want to live and work into the future.”

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The Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) is a socially responsible non-profit organization that spearheads, designs, and launches technology and commercialization projects that advance next-generation zero-carbon mobility and transportation solutions across Canada. It also develops low-cost simulation tools that help transit agencies across Canada and the United States predict how their electric buses, hydrogen fuel cell buses and autonomous smart vehicles (for first kilometre/last kilometre solutions) will operate in real-time on roads and in service. These advancements help to grow the low-carbon and smart technology eco-system across Canada and North America, leading to job growth and economic development over the long-term.

Our Vision is to make Canada a global leader in low-carbon smart mobility technologies across heavy-duty and light-duty platforms, including advanced transit, transportation, and integrated mobility applications.

For Media inquiries, contact Grace Reilly (grace.reilly [at] cutric-crituc.org)