Oxford’s first electric open-top double decker bus has arrived in the city.
The bus is the first of five open-top City Sightseeing Oxford buses, owned by Oxford Bus Company, that are being retrofitted to electric.
City Sightseeing Oxford buses operate one-hour guided hop-on, hop-off open-top tours of the city and take in a number of Oxford’s tourist attractions.
Phil Southall, City Sightseeing Oxford and Oxford Bus Company managing director, said: “This is an exciting landmark day in Oxford’s journey towards improving air quality in the city via the introduction of more sustainable modes of transport.
“We’re proud to deliver the first electric double decker bus in the city in partnership with Oxford City Council.
“We have always been committed to being at the forefront of the industry on environmental technology innovation and over half of our buses are powered by hybrid technology”
Funding for the buses was provided to Oxford City Council from the UK government’s Clean Bus Technology Fund.
In February 2018, Oxford City Council was awarded £1.7m to retrofit 78 buses to the Euro 6 standard and to convert five open-top double decker buses to electric.
In March 2019, the council secured a further £700,000 to upgrade an additional 37 city buses to Euro 6 standard to help reduce air pollution, bringing the total government funding to improve Oxford’s buses to £2.3m, with a total of 115 buses being upgraded.
Oxford Bus Company has so far completed 65 of its 71 vehicle upgrades under this programme.
To support the programme, Oxford Bus Company has made an investment of £350,000, including an investment of £80,000 to install the charging equipment for the double decker sightseeing buses, including a battery storage system to harness the energy produced by their solar panels.
Over the past two years, Oxford Bus Company has conducted several trials of single decker electric buses on its services, the most recent of these being a BYD single decker electric bus that was used on Park & Ride service 500 and to provide a special Park & Ride service to the Oxford EV Summit.
Earlier this month, a partnership of Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford City Council, Stagecoach, the Oxford Bus Company and Arriva announced the submission of a funding bid to be Britain’s first all-electric bus city.
Go-Ahead Group, which owns Oxford Bus Company, also announced plans last month to deploy single-decker air filtering buses in cities across the UK, including Oxford.
Each bus is fitted with an air filtering system made up of three fans on the roof that suck ultra-fine particles and dirt into special filters.
Over the past decade, air pollution levels in Oxford have reportedly decreased by 36.8%. However, the latest data from the Oxford City Council’s 72 air pollution monitoring locations has shown that levels of NO2 fell by an average of 0.23% between 2017 and 2018 – a slower rate in comparison to the 22.7% decrease between 2016 and 2017.
Want to learn more about how electric commercial vehicles can improve urban air quality? CiTTi Exhibition 2020 takes place on the 3rd and 4th of June at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena. Register your interest to attend at www.cittiexhibition.co.uk
