From diesel to hybrid to electric, nearly

The piece below is an extract from Michael McDowell’s column in The Irish Times yesterday.

It all sounds bizarre. And to make it all sound even more bizarre why did the NTA buy these electric buses so close to the purchase of approximately 200 hybrid buses over the last tw0 years?

Why did the NTA move away from buying Volvo vehicles?

Michael McDowell

"The National Transport Authority (NTA) bought 134 new all-electric buses in June 2022 for use in Dublin.

There are 100 new double-decker buses and 34 single-deck electric buses in storage around the city, but none are in use because the NTA failed to get planning permission for the charging infrastructure to enable them to operate.

An NTA spokesperson said that the project to plan, commission and seek planning approval for the infrastructure is now “under way”. The buses cost us at least €50 million and we don’t yet know the cost of the unbuilt charging infrastructure.

These buses will not be on the streets until the substations and charge points are installed. Planning permission, it seems, must await precise specification of the proposed infrastructure. Registering the vehicles for road use is also “now under way”. They will use the chargers already installed for existing hybrid buses in the fleet to train drivers over the coming months. The testing and training phase will last “about three months”.

Maybe they will manage to get the buses into service in early 2024, but that will be done on an “incremental basis”.

This shambles is what bureaucratic Ireland describes as “rolling out” new programmes and projects. In the meantime, the buses lie idle and the people whose job it was to plan and install the charging infrastructure in tandem with the ordering and purchase sit at their desks. Or maybe they are working from home these days."