Blue Bird Corporation, in conjunction with its dealer Anderson Blue Bird Bus Sales of New England, has delivered its first batch of 20 electric school buses to Boston Public Schools (BPS). School officials and local government leaders hailed the groundbreaking pilot program as the largest electric school bus deployment in the Northeast. The district says this pilot program is the first step to turn its entire bus fleet of 750 vehicles to electric.

Boston Public Schools recently put the 20 Blue Bird Vision electric buses into service. The school buses can carry a maximum of 71 students for up to 120 miles on a single charge. The vehicles take approximately four hours to charge from 0-100% based on BPS’s Level III ICE 30 kW fast chargers installed at the district’s Readville, MA bus depot.

Boston Public Schools says it anticipates benefiting from significant cost-saving opportunities by reducing or eliminating the fuel and maintenance costs tied to traditional diesel-powered vehicles. Select Blue Bird customers reported fuel costs of up to 49 cents per mile for their diesel buses, compared to an average 14 cents per mile in energy costs for electric buses.

Boston Public Schools says it has relied on Anderson Blue Bird Bus Sales of New England for more than 10 years to help meet its student transportation needs and maintains a fleet of nearly 750 buses, approximately a third of which are diesel-powered.

Blue Bird says its zero-emission buses now transport over 2,500 students to and from 42 local-area schools every day.