Our mission sounds simple enough, to create the New York City’s (NYC) first all-electric school bus company. But why would two attorneys’ want to switch careers to start a school bus company. Because we are tired of waiting for others to do the right thing and protect children from the dangers of harmful diesel emissions. It has been known for decades that diesel emissions contain harmful gases, particulates, and carcinogens.
The NYC Department of Education (DOE) has shown a lack of competence in most areas, but it is especially negligent when it comes to pupil transportation. Characterized by politics as usual, cronyism, late student pickups, and no shows, and aging buses that spew their poison into the surrounding environment and into the cabs of the buses which carry our precious cargo. The DOE continues to rely on failing independent contractors to supply its vast need for school buses.
The private school bus industry is not much better if not worse. Once a school bus company looks down a route, they basically become a mini monopoly. It becomes next to impossible for another company to challenge them once they have the majority of the riders in the area already locked into a contract. So new parents have no choice in which school bus company to use. This power dynamic puts parents at a server disadvantage and gives little incentive for the school bus company to be responsive to parent’s requests or to innovate.
But there is another choice! By helping Green Apple Transport become the first all-electric school bus contractor, we could seize a real opportunity to make school busing in NYC better and safer.
Our Journey
On February 22, 2017, the need for electric school buses became abundantly apparent to me when I chaperoned my daughter’s class to a play at the Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College. When we exited the play, I heard, saw and most importantly smelled the fumes from all the diesel school buses idling, picking up and dropping off children from the various schools going to the performance. As an environmental attorney, I knew of the dangerous components of diesel fuel. As an environmentalist and a big fan of Tesla, I had long extolled the benefits of replacing gas vehicles with electric. Now that the electric passenger car revolution was upon us—why not electric school buses?
After about two months of researching the state of electrification of school buses and complaining to my family that outside of California and a few pilot projects nothing was being done, my wife said: “stop complaining or do something about it.” As a lawyer, my first thought was that we need legislation. Recognizing that NY was the largest user of school buses in the nation, I was convinced that NY could play a central role in the transition.
The Electric School Bus Campaign Was Born!
We wrote a position letter with a list of the differences between diesel and electric school buses and a timeline as to how NYC could be all-electric by 2030 and NYS by 2040. We sent the letter to all of the public officials we could and got little or no response for months. In October of 2017, the Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams’ office reached out and invited us to their “RESET” environmental issues meeting. There we met other activists who encouraged us to continue the fight on this important issue.
To learn more about what we have done and will be doing visit our Evolv-Electric website.
Our Partial Victories
We started with legislative advocacy, we working to ensure that a large portion of NY’s VW Diesel Settlement Mitigation Funds will be put into the category that includes electric school buses. On September 5, 2018, the Governor announced that $52.5 million of the $128 million in VW funds would go to the category that includes electric school buses. But over a year later, none of the funds have been released to the public.
At the meeting, we found out that the New York City Council had a bill to reduce the age limitations on school buses from 16 years to only 10. The bill was introduced by Council Member Dromm, but nothing happened with the bill and it only garnered six sponsors.
In December of 2017, I met with Mr. Dromm and encouraged him to reintroduce the bill with requirements for electric school buses, and we would help increase support for the bill. We worked together and with other environmental groups to slowly build support for the bill. On December 17, 2018, the City Council had a hearing on the bill and it received a lot of support. Currently, the bill has more than enough votes (43 of 51 members) for it to pass, however, for some reason, the NYC Council has not taken a vote on the bill. Join the fight and sign our petition asking NYC Council to sign the bill!
We also worked with ex-Councilmember Rafael Espinal Jr to start a pilot program in NYC. To his credit, Mr. Espinal was able to allocate $1.5 million of the city budget to the DOE to start an electric school bus pilot. On December 16, 2018, the DOE announced that the pilot project would be ready for the 2019-2020 school year. But as the 2019 school year began, there was no electric school bus pilot. The DOE did not even placed an order for the buses yet! We joined with then Councilmember Espinal Jr. and other groups and held a press conference outside of the DOE headquarters in Manhattan.
On April 22, 2021, the Mayor and the DOE announced that they would finally start the pilot project on the following Monday with the first electric school bus to operate in NYC.
Dangers of Diesel School Buses
Diesel emissions disproportionately affect children whose organs and immune systems are still developing as they are exposed to higher levels of emissions during the 2-4 hours, they spend on school buses every day. In NYC, special education children generally spend the most time on school buses because they are in a special district and can be bused to schools in any part of the city. Since 2001 the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has reported that buses drivers have shorter life expectancy with higher incidents of lung and heart disease than people of other professions. NYC is also the only area in NY that does not meet the EPA’s air quality standards for nitrous oxide. NYC’s density also increases the effects of these pollutants as there are about 50 school buses per square.
Diesel emissions from school buses are particularly dangerous for children. The US EPA and the World Health Organization have not established any safe level of exposure for children to diesel emissions. Studies in 2001 and 2002 showed that the levels of diesel emission inside school buses could be 20 to 30 times higher inside the school bus compared to the surrounding environment. (See NRDC and Yale studies.) Children’s are more suspectable to the damaging effects of pollution because their organs are still developing. This is compounded by the fact that children also take in 50% more air per pound of body mass compared to adults.
Studies have shown that repeated exposure to diesel particulate matter (a known carcinogen) increases cancer risks and the incidences of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and asthma. Areas of Brooklyn, Harlem and the southern Bronx have the highest rates of asthma, with as much 1 in 4 children experiencing significant reductions of lung development. A 2015 study out of the University of Michigan showed that children’s lung capacities and development were below average in districts that used diesel with higher sulfur content. The children in school districts that had switched to low sulfur diesel had improved lung capacities and lower rates of asthma.
Nitrous Oxide, a component of diesel emissions, is a major contributor to smog which is known to cause asthmatic attacks. NYC has known for years that the number one cause of absenteeism in school is asthma and respiratory illnesses. A 2019 study out of Georgia showed that school districts who had upgraded to lower emission buses should an increase of up to 10% on children’s test scores.
Benefits of Electric School Buses
Electric school buses have no tailpipe emissions. Studies have shown that even if electric school buses are powered from coal-fired plants you would still get an overall reduction in emissions. Electric powertrains are more than three times as efficient as internal combustion engines. Electric motors also have much fewer moving parts and require a lot less maintenance. Even the cleanest diesel engines are one missed maintenance issue away from releasing significant levels of harmful emission.
Electric school buses with vehicle-to-grid technology will also make the electrical grid more resilient as we face our future with more severe storm events and help us transition to renewable energy power generation. The batteries on the buses can absorb extra energy during the peak production times for wind and solar energy. The buses can then return most of that energy to the grid during peak demand periods. They are especially helpful during the summer when there is less demand for school buses and more demand for electricity. During emergencies, school buses are already used to move large amounts of people but now they will also be able to bring power to areas that have been cut off from the grid.
DOE’s Awful School Busing Track Record
Based on the DOE’s horrible track record, we should not be surprised that they failed to start the electric school bus pilot in 2019. In 2017, there was talk about the DOE and Con Edison doing an electric school bus pilot in NYC, but those buses ended up going to White Plains.
Every year, the beginning of the school year is marked with countless school bus delays and confusion regarding school bus routes. Too frequently, buses do not even show up. Our kids walked to their neighborhood elementary school, but they missed a number of field trips because the buses did not arrive or were too late. Last year was particularly bad, the DOE received almost 100,000 calls about school bus issues in the first month.
This resulted in an over 5-hour hearing by the NYC Council and three things came to light. First, most of the routing was done by hand with maps and the DOE did not get the routes to the school bus companies more than a week before school started, if that early. Second, almost one-third of the buses did not have GPS. It’s hard to believe that in 2019, in NYC, we had thousands of school buses that did not even have GPS. This caused drivers to get lost for hours taking crazy routes and even asking elementary age students how to get home. Third, NYC parents have had enough and they want to see a change!
Councilmember Ben Kallos, introduced a bill to require GPS in all the school buses but once again, the DOE showed its ineptitude. The new GPS was a manual unit that the drivers were required to turn on. But drivers frequently failed to do so. So many parents would call the DOE who then was unable to provide them any information about where the buses were located. In an attempt to remedy this failure, a week before school started, the DOE announced that they licensed the app from VIA, a ridesharing company, to autoroute the buses.
But of course, the VIA system is not compatible with the GPS units they just purchased, so that is wasted money. Millions of dollars that could have gone towards clean, electric buses with built-in GPS tracking! In spite of everything, the DOE continues to feed the current monopolistic system where contracts for millions of dollars are renewed each year for the same old failing bus companies (one of which had an astounding record of 99% lateness for special needs students), ignoring the fact that these companies have no incentive or motivation to do better. We can no longer sit idly by and wait for the Mayor, the City Council, and the DOE to muster the political will to effectuate change. We are ready, the technology is available and now is the time!
New York City Needs Green Apple Transport
So, for these, and many other reasons, we have decided to start Green Apple Transport. We are saddened by the multiple failures of the current system and believe it can be better. There seems to be a severe lack of action or urgency by those in power to fix it. Time and again we receive lip service regarding how electric school buses are important. We have made some progress but it has fallen short of any real action.
California will have over 350 electric school buses on the road this school year. Virginia recently announced that they will start with 50 electric school buses in Fairfax and by 2030 all of their school buses will be electric. However, NYC with the largest school system in the nation and spends $1.3 billion yearly on busing has no electric school buses.
If we don’t do it, who will?
If not now, when?
Unfortunately, Bronx High School of Science and the Lehman High School lost their school bus contractor last year during the Covid school shutdown. But this also creates a great opportunity for the schools and Green Apple to create a better busing future for their kids and the school.
We foresee Green Apple Transport as a high growth company. We can demonstrate the benefits to the public with real-world data. Speaking to parents and bus drivers, there is clearly a demand for electric school buses. Electric school manufacturers are ready to take orders, so there is no question about the availability of the technology and the potential supply of buses.