Update on Seneca’s Electric Buses

It will be a few more weeks of shadowing for the new all-electric bus fleet in the City of Seneca.   However, Seneca Planning and Community Development Director Ed Halbig says passengers will begin riding the new electric buses soon.  “The new buses are operating in shadow service as they have been through the month of December.  There was a limited amount of time that we could get some miles on them to see how they were operating and so we are continuing that and hopeful by that point we will have some good data as to whether we are ready to go.  We will also be exploring whether it is going to be a full blown start or kind of work our way into this.” Halbig explains why the original launch date for the new buses was delayed.  “There were some issues with the charging stations operating 100% of the time and Proterra has been working to make those corrections.  In the meantime they have also been making some updates on the buses as far as software and hardware to make them the best that they can so that everything should work great.” The hope is to have the new all-electric CAT buses, being built by Proterra, start carrying passengers the last week in January or the start of February.