Feds award McAllen $1.9 million for electric bus pilot project
Follow Dave Hendricks on Twitter: @dmhj
McALLEN — McAllen plans to retrofit three diesel buses with a cutting-edge electric technology developed in South Korea, which will allow the buses to charge wirelessly while they pause to load and unload passengers.
It’s a pilot project for OLEV Technologies of North Reading, Mass., which has licensed the technology from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, one of South Korea’s foremost research universities.
“The technology itself has been developed and actually field-tested to some extent in Korea,” said Hikyu Lee, president and CEO of OLEV Technologies, which stands for On Line Electric Vehicle.
A $1.9 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration and an additional $211,000 from McAllen will fund the project, which should launch in 2012 and be completed by 2013, said city Transit Director Elizabeth Suarez, who oversees McAllen’s bus fleet.
The federal agency announced the grant Thursday. McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, convened a news conference Monday to discuss the project.
“Writing grants for the federal government is not the easiest thing,” Cuellar said, congratulating McAllen on securing the extremely competitive federal funding. “It takes a lot of paperwork. It takes a lot of effort.”
The Federal Transit Administration selected McAllen’s bus project from among 266 applications to the Transit Investment in Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction grant program, which awarded $112 million to 46 projects nationwide, according to a news release from the agency.
South Korean researchers have tested the technology with pilot projects at a theme park and one of the institute’s campuses, Lee said.
McAllen’s buses, which would run solely on electricity and charge wirelessly while loading and unloading passengers, would be OLEV Technologies’ U.S. pilot project. Each electric bus would stop for about two to five minutes at three stops that double as charging stations and a fourth charging station at the city’s bus terminal.
Longer stops at the charging stations might lengthen the route’s time from about an hour to 70 minutes, Suarez said, but should reduce energy and fuel costs by 80 percent compared to standard diesel buses, according to a city fact sheet.
“We’re really excited about this project,” Suarez said, adding that she expects McAllen’s cutting-edge buses to draw transportation officials and industry-watchers to town for tours and firsthand experience with the technology.
Metro McAllen, which has experienced record ridership this year on its fleet of seven brand-new buses, will test the electric vehicles on Route 4, which serves La Plaza Mall and several hospitals.
“We are very much excited about the huge opportunity,” Lee said, adding that the McAllen project will be a major milestone for the small company, which has 10 employees and plans for rapid expansion.
Lee said OLEV and McAllen still must determine where the buses will be retrofitted with wireless charging technology, but he added the project has the potential to bring new jobs to both Massachusetts and Texas.
____
Dave Hendricks covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4452.
____
Follow Dave Hendricks on Twitter: @dmhj
