Thanks to $2.45 million in combined grants, the Steamboat Springs School District is on the road to replacing its aging diesel-burning buses with a mostly electric fleet for the 2024-25 school year.

“The green part is great, and I’m pro that for sure, but this also provided us with the ability to modernize our fleet,” said Casey Ungs, the district’s transportation manager. “We went from an average bus age of approximately 15 years old for that fleet to an average of about three to four years now.”

Since putting its first electric bus on the road in February 2022, the Steamboat Springs School District has replaced seven diesel buses with more environmentally friendly all-electric buses. The district still operates two propane and one gas bus for out-of-town trips.

The Steamboat Springs School District said it will use almost $1.7 million in new grant money from the Colorado Electric School Bus Grant Program to purchase three more full-sized electric buses and two smaller 14-passenger buses, including the daily special education bus with a wheelchair lift. The grant will also allow the school district to install three electric vehicle chargers that can charge the buses in a few hours.

“We decided to pursue the opportunity to acquire electric buses because our current fleet was aging, and the grant money would allow us to upgrade and reduce the average age of the fleet at a fraction of the cost,” Ungs said. “The average price EV bus was $68,000 (after grants) versus a diesel or propane equivalent can cost $145,000.”

The grant program is designed to assist schools and nonprofits in purchasing electric buses or other zero-emission vehicles to transport children. The school district is also waiting to hear about a Federal EPA grant. If the district is awarded that grant, it should pay for 100% of the most recent fleet upgrades.

“I’m pro to electric because of the centralization of emissions to one source over at the power plant,” Ungs said. “I also like the actual power that the buses have as far as acceleration comparative to a diesel. We’re obviously not trying to drag race people, but they have much more get up and go, so we’re more able to safely merge into traffic, and they’re quieter so that the driver is able to more effectively communicate to the students on the bus, and then also be able to hear more of that drive scene around them versus having the clank of a diesel engine.”

The Steamboat Springs School District’s fleet covers 223,819 total miles each school year, including daily transportation and activity trips. The Federal Transit Administration’s Greenhouse Gas estimator indicates that the school district’s decision to replace older diesel and gasoline buses with electric ones will cut CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases each year by 132 metric tons.

The hope is that by the 2024-25 school year, the 10 buses used to transport students locally will all be electric, making the entire daily route operation 100% electric.

This would make Steamboat Springs one of the first school districts in rural Colorado to achieve this feat. The district will continue using propane or gas buses for out-of-town travel to locations not equipped with charging stations.

“We are proud to be setting an example for other small, rural school districts in the state on how to incorporate electric buses within existing fleets,” said Celine Wicks, superintendent of the Steamboat Springs School District.