One of York’s renowned City Sight Seeing buses will become the first double-decker bus in the country to get an electric makeover, thanks to a grant made by the Coalition government.
Reliance buses will also benefit from the same pot of funding, with the installation of new exhausts that will help reduce poor emissions in the city.
Details of the supplementary allocation were released 3 weeks ago.
A City Sight Seeing bus, operated by Transdev will become the first double decker in the UK to be converted from diesel to pure electric with lithium ion batteries, similar to those used by mobile phones.
Converting from diesel to electric will have substantial benefits for air quality as the bus is used intensively in the city centre. The cost of the conversion will be £75k, but will save an estimated £15k a year in fuel costs.
The remaining DfT funding will be used to retrofit two diesel buses operated by Reliance, along the A19 route,with Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) exhaust technology which reduces emissions of small particles.
Nigel Eggleton at Transdev, said “Thousands of tourists and residents travel on our popular City Sight Seeing buses every year so it’s fantastic news that through this funding we’ll be able to offer an even better travelling experience, whilst at the same time helping to improve air quality in York by converting to an electric bus.
“We’re also delighted that we’ll be the first operator in the UK to benefit from this opportunity and have the very first double decker bus electric makeover!”
The transformed buses will join nine new electric buses which will provide passenger journeys on the streets of York from next year, following a successfully bid to the DfT for £824k earlier this year, made available through the government’s Green Bus Fund.
They also form part of City of York Council’s Low Emission Strategy (the first strategy to be adopted in the UK) which aims to enable the uptake of low emission vehicles and reduce emissions of air quality pollutants and greenhouse gases.