Nottingham’s two bus-based Park & Ride sites – at Nottingham Racecourse and Queens Drive – will see their services turn electric from January 2017 following an investment of £3.2million. The 13 new fully electric single decker buses add to the 45 already in service and combine to make one of the largest electric bus fleets in Europe.
REMOURBAN, together with Nottingham’s Department for Transport Local Sustainable Transport Fund, Plugged in Places, Office of Low Emission Vehicle, Department for Transport’s Green Bus Funding Round and the City Council’s Workplace Parking Levy, played a key role in making this innovation happening and enabled operator Nottingham Community Transport to provide emission-free services to workplaces, health and education sites and district centres for five million passenger trips a year.
Following this rapid growht of Nottingham’s electric buses, the charging network will be expanded over the next two years, using the Office for Low Emission Vehicles Low Emission Bus Scheme Grant (LEBS), along with the installation of a network of rapid chargers for electric buses at strategic points around the city.
On Friday 16 December, at the ceremony to mark the launch of the new services, ten pupils from Welbeck primary school – who won a poster competition with designs showing the environmental benefits of Nottingham’s electric buses – have had each one of the city’s new electric buses named after them. This event has been the perfect opportunity to combine Nottingham’s innovative results in electric mobility services with the opportunity to engage with citizens and kids, bringing technology closer to society and fostering innovation acceptance and participation for the mobility services of the future.
9 January 2017