E-Buses Add Up To Extra $1B: PATTON

When Ottawa embarked on this nearly $1-billion journey to make its fleet fully emission-free by 2036, the expectation was to have 182 electric buses by the end of last year, including dozens of longer 60-foot vehicles.
Instead, the city has acquired just eight e-buses, and the higher-capacity models are now off the table.
OC Transpo will get 100 fewer electric buses for $1B price tag. The price tag has $256M for infrastructure but Montreal for similar buses, has budged $750M. Why is Montreal’s $500M more, or rather, why is Ottawa’s $500M less? Did Ottawa underestimate the costs to then sneak in increases $20M at a time? I bought fleets of vehicles before – you NEVER buy similar vehicles from 2 different manufacturers because you have to duplicate everything, but that is what the City of Ottawa did. Split the procurement between Nova and New Flyer, and both are years behind in delivering buses. But to accommodate this, the city now has to buy 2 separate sets of: expensive special tools and test equipment, maintenance training programs and trainers, parts, warehousing, supply chains, operator training, different charging systems, different batteries, different budgets and financial tracking for each fleet, different maintenance tracking and ordering systems, and more. They have essentially increased the complexity of logistics by a factor of 2 and the cost by a similar amount. Remember also the city does not maintain buses well – 70 double decker buses have been scrapped or sold at $1.3M each. Don’t forget the 165 Hybrid buses at $800,000 each that were scrapped. Many cities in Canada are switching back to diesel buses after trying electric. Remember, much of the electric bus money from the feds was a loan we have to pay back!