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There are people who “are really champing at the bit to get this right,” she said.

Over the past seven weeks, Transpo has gone from recommending against an electric bus trial to wanting to spend millions to add the vehicles to the transit fleet.

On June 12, council unanimously supported a recommendation from Mayor Jim Watson directing staff to bring a plan to the transit commission for adding electric buses during this term of council, which ends in 2022. Watson ran for re-election last fall on a pledge to introduce electric buses to the Transpo fleet.

Transpo, which is cool to the idea of a pilot project since it can monitor the trials of other transit agencies, has found between $5 million and $6 million to buy battery-electric buses and the necessary charging infrastructure. The money is from reallocating funds in capital projects. Transpo would need political approval for the electric bus purchase, likely through a report next fall on capital projects.

The transit commission heard a diesel bus costs about $630,0000, where a comparable electric bus would be $1.2 million.

Coun. Allan Hubley, the chair of the transit commission, has called on the city to be wary of embracing a new bus technology without doing due diligence, pointing to the dismal performance of 175 hybrid electric-diesel buses that Transpo now wants to unload.

“I don’t want to take us down that road again,” Hubley said.

Hubley supports the purchase of two electric buses, but he’s concerned about the cost if it comes to expanding the electric bus fleet, since an electric bus is about twice as much as a similar diesel bus.