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Say your goodbyes to overhead-electric buses in Cambridge. They’re being discontinued this weekend.
They will temporarily be replaced by diesel-hybrid buses, and then battery-powered buses.
Overhead-electric buses in Cambridge will soon be a thing of the past.
After running for about 90 years, they will be permanently disconnected this weekend and sent to the junkyard, The Boston Globe reports.
The buses will be replaced by diesel-hybrid buses for about two years, according to the Globe. After that, battery-powered buses will be their permanent replacement.
Right now, the MBTA is in the process of switching all its buses to battery-electric vehicles by 2040. The T’s North Cambridge garage, which used to house the overhead-electric buses, will be renovated over the next two years to serve 35 battery-electric buses, the Globe reported.
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This plan was not supported by some climate and transit advocates, the Globe reported.
“It’s not the outcome we would have liked to see,” Jarred Johnson, executive director of the advocacy group Transit Matters, told the Globe. “We’re going to hold them accountable on this and make sure they bring that electrified service.”
Still, it won over some elected officials who believe that two years of diesel buses will be worth turning all the MBTA’s buses electric, the Globe reported.
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Some riders told the Globe that they’d like to see the overhead-electric buses stay, given their lack of carbon emissions.
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But Scott Hamwey, the MBTA’s director of bus modernization, told the Globe there are major drawbacks to the buses, such as the buses having to be taken out of service due to a tree falling on a wire or ice building up, not to mention that they can’t be moved to other tracks, thus hindering flexibility.
While the battery-powered buses are cleaner and more flexible, the Globe reported that the MBTA has said their battery-powered buses experience big range reductions on cold days.
Perhaps counterproductively, the MBTA plans to fix the problem by using diesel heaters in the Cambridge garage when the weather gets cold, which will cause more diesel emissions.
The Globe reported that environmental groups are hoping to get the MBTA to fix the problem with in-route chargers at bus stations that would allow the buses to charge while at bus stations as an alternative.
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