New Flyer of America Inc. recently announced that the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority (RFTA) has placed a new order for eight 40-foot, battery-electric Xcelsior CHARGE™ heavy-duty transit buses.
RFTA celebrated the launch of its first zero-emission bus in Aspen, Colorado. It was unveiled during a ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside RFTA CEO Dan Blankenship and City of Aspen Transportation Director John Krueger, along with Pitkin County Commissioner and RFTA Board member George Newman and Aspen City Council and RFTA Board member Ann Mullins.
The order, which includes the zero-emission buses as well as four ABB 150 kWh depot chargers purchased from New Flyer Infrastructure Solutions™, supports RFTA and the City of Aspen’s Battery Electric Bus Pilot program, made possible by grants and local funding. The project will operate using Colorado’s clean energy grid, which draws energy from solar power and was ranked 11th for solar energy generation by the Solar Energy Industries Association in 2016, the same year Colorado produced 925.8 MW of solar energy and invested more than $510 million to expand solar energy.
“New Flyer commends RFTA on its push toward environmental sustainability, building on its zero- emission journey with Xcelsior CHARGE battery-electric buses,” said Chris Stoddart, President at New Flyer. “With over 50 years of experience manufacturing zero-emission buses, New Flyer is proud to lead zero-emission mobility with the latest buses, technology, and infrastructure that together, help build sustainable public transit across America. Congratulations to the community of Aspen!”
“They’re quiet, they’re clean, they’re the new future. This is a huge shift in beginning to change in terms of how we look at dealing with our carbon footprint and how we start to address climate change,” Newman said.
RFTA is the regional transportation authority providing bus service to the Colorado communities of Aspen, Snowmass Village, Pitkin County, Basalt, and portions of Eagle County, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and New Castle. It is the second largest transit system in Colorado and the largest rural transit system in the U.S., providing over 5.1 million passenger trips per year. It has been named Mass Transit Magazine’s Best Mass Transit System of North America, Best Large Transit Agency of the Year by the Colorado Association of Transit Agencies, received the Federal Transit Administrator’s Outstanding Public Service Award and SHIFT Sustainability Award, and also received the White House Champions of Change Transportation Innovator Award.