Electrifying School Buses in the Bronx and Beyond (ESB3)

Emissions from diesel school buses are harmful to children and disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities like those found near the Zerega school bus depot in the Bronx. While electric school buses (ESBs) are commercially available, significant deployment barriers remain including driver and mechanic knowledge gaps and the difficulties of planning charging infrastructure.

The "Electrifying School Buses in the Bronx and Beyond (ESB3)" project helps address these challenges. The NYCSBUS (opens in new window) team is working on a multi-pronged project to help electrify buses in the Bronx and around the state, conduct charging infrastructure planning to reduce costs, and train the electric school bus workforce.

Project ESB3 will deploy 30 ESBs at the NYCSBUS Bronx Zerega depot. The project strategy will be replicated to electrify the entire NYCSBUS bus fleet of nearly 1,000 buses by 2035.

The ESB3 project will develop customized managed charging plans to control costs. The project will use vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology at the Zerega depot in the Bronx, and NYCSBUS's Greenpoint dispatch center in Brooklyn will serve as a testbed for infrastructure configurations, including vehicle-to-building (V2B) operations and space-saving innovations like pole-mounted chargers, which will also feed into the Innovation Cluster's curriculum.

The team will partner with school districts around the state to offer technical guidance as school districts make their transition to electric school buses- this support will include the development of fleet electrification plans, as well as outreach and education support.