New York Clean Transportation Prizes

Bronx and Wurtsboro

Although electric trucks have the potential to improve quality of life in urban areas by significantly reducing harmful air emissions and noise, they must first overcome prohibitive upfront costs and an underprepared workforce to realize this potential. By addressing workforce training and financial and implementation challenges associated with truck electrification, FEaST will accelerate the necessary conditions for electric truck adoption at scale in and around New York City. Solutions to be employed include innovative “electrification-as-a-service” financing arrangements and the establishment of a first-of-its-kind electric truck and charging training and job placement initiative. This initiative will help ensure workforce preparedness, thereby easing electric truck implementation, and will be undertaken in partnership with key institutions in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area.

Rockaways and Brentwood

Many disadvantaged communities are underserved by existing public transportation options and lack sustainable alternatives to personal vehicles, leading to lost opportunities in terms of jobs, education, healthcare, and community. Communities in the Rockaways and Suffolk County are disproportionately impacted by the negative effects of climate change and air pollution and are underserved by transit, creating barriers to opportunity. The solution proposed by the Circuit team brings an affordable, electric micro-shuttle service to these communities, available for on-demand trips to bridge first/last mile gaps affordably and conveniently. This microtransit fleet will consist of 100% battery-electric vehicles, locally hired and trained drivers, and mobile ride-request app technology supporting smart stops and rider-pooling functions. Revenue will be generated through fare income, third-party advertising, and possibly EV charging revenue, with publicly available EV charging hubs installed to provide these communities with much-needed charging options.

Brooklyn and Queens

Dollar vans are a cost-effective method of improving transit access in the New York City Metro Area, but existing dollar vans are exclusively internal-combustion-engine vehicles and often lack the licensing and training to provide safe, accountable service. Dollaride’s Clean Transit Access Program (CTAP) will provide affordable electric shuttle buses as well as charging infrastructure to certified dollar van drivers operating in disadvantaged communities in Brooklyn. Dollaride will carefully vet dollar van drivers while helping them to attain the proper licensing, safe-driving certification, and insurance needed to operate fully licensed in New York City. The program will deploy dozens of uniformly designed electric dollar vans. CTAP will initially focus in Brooklyn, but this service would be applicable to disadvantaged communities in transit deserts across the state. This program will reduce the carbon emissions of those riders as well as provide clean transportation to folks from the target disadvantaged areas. 

Village and Town Ossining, Croton-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry and Tarrytown

Building back from decades of disinvestment, the Village of Ossining needs affordable, clean transportation options for its ethnically and economically diverse population, who often struggle with housing affordability, traffic congestion, and limited accessibility to local services. Starting in Ossining and expanding to four additional communities, EIT InnoEnergy’s Project MOVER will provide up to 750 e-bikes and charging infrastructure—to improve access to local transit, jobs, and other destinations for historically underserved populations of Westchester County. E-bike parking will be placed at key destinations and in topographically challenged neighborhoods and a new bike boulevard network will highlight safer, lower-stress routes for riders. Project MOVER will incorporate a bike share network, lease-to-own program, e-bike library, supportive programming, and an Electric Micromobility Incubator initiative to help meet the needs of a large, diverse group of residents and visitors. Access to affordable e-bikes will also be available through a subsidized lease-to-own program as well as e-bike libraries hosted by local businesses and organizations.

Bronx

Hydrogen fuel-cell electric buses (FCEBs) offer a proven solution to two of the main challenges to transportation electrification, namely range and charging time. Hydrogen buses have ranges of 300+ miles even in harsh winter conditions and offer fast charging times (a FCEB can be fully recharged in six to fifteen minutes). This project will deploy two zero-emission FCEBs on MTA bus routes in the Bronx and install a hydrogen fueling station at the MTA’s Gun Hill Depot capable of fueling multiple buses. The depot will use hydrogen primarily produced with 100% renewable energy from an electrolysis facility in Becancour, Canada, the largest source of clean hydrogen on the East Coast. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of hydrogen fuel-cell transit operations on the East Coast and provide critical real-world experience to determine the possibilities for wider deployment across the MTA’s 28 other bus depots and other large fleet operators nationwide. The hydrogen fuel-cell buses will operate on routes out of Gun Hill Depot in the North Bronx, providing job opportunities and improving the environment for residents in the adjoining neighborhoods.

Buffalo

Residents in Buffalo’s East Side – the heart of Buffalo’s Black community – walk, bike, and take public transportation more than other residents in the city; yet the city’s streets are not accommodating to transit and non-motorized travel. This project embraces the intersection of multiple problems in inclusive, equitable mobility and climate solutions by identifying strategies focused on people, place and policy. This project will deploy e-bikes, electric carshare, and mobility as a service; invest in a just transition and job training; build wealth in existing communities; and reduce access barriers for participation in the new mobility future. The project will advance 2 regionally prioritized greenways that connect to the Main Street transit corridor and leverage equitable transit-oriented development (eTOD) work to identify opportunities to install climate smart transit stops and EV charging stations and work with communities to establish safe complete streets through quick build projects. The project will create an all-ages, all-abilities curriculum for youth and disseminate an education campaign that ties mobility choices to climate change locally.

Bronx

While the benefits to the environment are clear, the deployment of electric school buses (ESBs) and related charging infrastructure requires significant planning and oversight. The solution in the ESB3 project is to build an innovative framework using NYCSBUS’s Bronx depot as a catalyst. The project will identify two additional New York State school districts as case studies and create a Center of Excellence with electric school bus transition toolkits and resources for other communities to adopt. Key opportunities to develop and implement solutions for general ESB adoption include: leveraging the capital funding commitment that NYCSBUS has already secured, taking advantage of NYCSBUS’s status as a non-profit organization by keeping infrastructure developments and intellectual property in the public domain, establishing specialized electric vehicle (EV) curriculum and training for drivers and mechanics through partnerships, and supporting two overburdened school districts outside of NYC to receive fleet transition technical assistance to help support school bus electrification across the state of New York.

Brooklyn

Red Hook, Brooklyn is a transit desert and its low income residents experience high travel times and transportation expenses. In addition, the neighborhood does not have any DC fast chargers for electric vehicles. The Red Hook Recharge Zone (RHRZ) is a proposed ultra-fast charger Superhub that will include 20 150kW DC fast chargers (serving up to 40 charging stalls), an electric ridehail fleet (operated by W2 employee drivers), and a multi-use community center connecting residents to different modes of electric transportation. The ridehail fleet will generate guaranteed demand for the charging hubs while creating green jobs and making it easier for residents to switch over to EVs. A battery energy storage system with solar canopies will provide renewable energy to the Superhub and improve grid resilience.

Ithaca

Low-income communities in Ithaca and Tompkins County are disproportionately affected by a lack of affordable transportation options and face challenges accessing essential services. The project will develop a partnership to provide a multimodal, zero-emission community-driven transportation network. Community needs will be met through both new transportation services and improvements to existing services. On-demand car and van service will be digitally integrated with the existing bus service to provide an app-based platform. Ithaca carshare services will include an EV fleet, and a new bikeshare service will be launched.

Bronx

The nexus of over 15,000 truck trips each workday, the Hunts Point peninsula in the South Bronx is home to the nation’s largest wholesale food hub. It’s also the location of a residential community of nearly 13,000, whose children (ages 5 to 17) were hospitalized for asthma in 2018 at nearly 2.5 times the New York City average rate. The challenges named above correspond to the following three solutions proposed in this project: 1) the repurposing of an industrial brownfield into a Recharge Hub, a publicly accessible freight-focused electric charging hub, 2) a new business strategy for engaging drivers via cooperative ownership of electric trucks, and 3) an emerging technical solution of battery-electric refrigeration for zero-emission trucks. These solutions seek to lower financial and technical barriers to adoption and broaden access to freight electric vehicles. In aggregate, these solutions will model a new paradigm for infrastructure deployment. The local community surrounding Hunts Point will benefit from job opportunities at the Recharge Hub and improved environmental conditions.