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Across the country, towns and cities of various sizes envisioned an electrified public transit system that could shuttle residents with vehicles that produced no carbon-filled exhaust.Many of those communities purchased buses from Silicon Valley-based Proterra, which was able to produce 550 buses over its 19-year existence before it went bankrupt in August.The company announced last month it had concluded auctions as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, and in the wake of its collapse public transit systems tell Just The News they have inoperable buses that can’t be repaired because the company is slow to supply parts to fix them.
Talamantes said the RTD has also had challenges with its bus charging infrastructure. The district operates four 500-kilowatt fast charging stations and five 60-kilowatt chargers. Proterra doesn’t have a valid California business license to complete work on the RTD chargers.There are also problems with the chargers’ software, which is proprietary. Since RTD staff doesn’t have the tools or training to troubleshoot or repair them, it has to rely solely on Proterra to provide that service. This has left one charger inoperable for the last four months due to limited Proterra personal and software troubleshooting tools, Talemantes said.Parts for the chargers are sometimes several months on backorder. To keep the chargers running, the district purchased used Proterra chargers and parts from another transit agency that ended its electric bus program.
The problems with the Proterra buses go back to well before the company’s bankruptcy. PBS/NPR affiliate WHYY reported in July 2021 that South Philadelphia transit system purchased some of the buses, which stopped running when their chassis cracked.In August 2021, the Minnesota Reformer reported that Duluth’s planned transition to an all-electric bus fleet also ran into problems with cracked chassis. The buses were also failing to drive up steep hills. The Duluth Transit Agency and Proterra told the Reformer that the cracks were "a cosmetic problem."More recently, the CBC reported that the city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, purchased 60 of the buses, and most of them aren’t running. More than half need replacement parts. Some of the buses have been down for over a year waiting for parts to come in.The Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) system, a joint operation between Jackson and Teton County, Wyoming, purchased eight of the buses. Cowboy State Daily reported in September that none of the buses were running at the time. Bruce Abel, START director, told Just The News that the system has managed to get two of those buses running.
Why is it when Democrats get behind a business or industry usually ends up being a major failure?And costing taxpayers, multi millions of dollars that could’ve been spent on something useful.
Usually cause that business is returning large portions of those taxpayer dollars to the Democrats backing them.
Basically a return on an embezzlement and money laundering of their campaign contributions!
