There will be 120 all-electric double-decker buses operating on Irish roads within two years, under a new deal brokered between the National Transport Authority (NTA) and a Ballymena-based bus manufacturer.
NTA chief executive Anne Graham said on Monday that 100 of the buses would operate in Dublin city with the remaining 20 in Limerick.
It is part of a five-year plan that will see 800 all-electric buses being introduced to the fleet, at a cost of €80 million per annum. Ms Graham said that the Irish public transport fleet has a target of achieving zero emissions by 2032.
“The transition to a zero-emission bus fleet is a central component of our BusConnects project, and the procurement of these battery-electric buses represents a key milestone in that process.
“There is no doubt that people are looking to us to provide better, more sustainable transport alternatives in all areas, and it is incumbent on us as an Authority to respond to that demand in a positive way,” she said.
In Dublin on Monday, one of the electric buses was demonstrated to the media. The bus is manufactured by Wrightbus which has a factory in Galgorm, on the outskirts of Ballymena in Northern Ireland. Neil Collins, chief executive of Wrightbus said the buses were the most efficient on the market.
“We’ve built the bus from the ground up and it is designed to be purely zero emissions.
“We’re also very proud to say that this bus has been measured as the world’s most efficient electric double decker bus,” said Mr Collins.
Ian Gourley, transport fleet manager at the NTA, said the buses had 450 kilowatt hours of total energy and the intention was to get a full-day service from each bus with overnight charging for eight hours at depots.
He said the NTA would now begin to test the range of buses on different routes and in different weather conditions. It said that Wrightbus had produced figures in simulated tests but they needed to be validated in real-life testing.
“Our expectation is that we will get in excess of 200 kilometres on a full day,” said Mr Gourley.
But he said the range also depend on the route and the time of day and battery use could vary dramatically on the same route at different times of the day. For example, he pointed to a 12km route that could take 90 minutes to complete during rush hour but could be completed in 30 minutes at off-peak times.
He said that 100 buses in Dublin constituted about 10 per cent of its fleet of 1,000. With over 200 hybrid buses already in the fleet, he said the overall reduction in emissions from Dublin Bus will be 30 per cent once these buses come into service.
Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Eamon Ryan said that these buses represented the future of public transport in Ireland.
“We are electrifying everything in transport and cutting out the carbon,” he said.
“We expect to see electric buses become the norm in every city.”
Mr Ryan said the speed of the move away from fossil fuels was demonstrated by Wrightbus moving within a year from 70 per cent of the buses it manufactured being diesel, to 70 per cent being electric.
The Government has already committed to not buy diesel buses into the future. These electric double-decker buses will be introduced in other large urban areas including Cork, Galway and Waterford over the next five years.
