CHICAGO — The CTA will buy electric buses and make other upgrades with a $29 million grant it received from the federal government.
The CTA will buy 10 fully accessible, all-electric buses with $3.4 million of the grant, according to a CTA news release. It will use the other funds to make communication and safety improvements so the CTA can manage the buses.
Another $13.2 million will go toward modernizing the Chicago Avenue Garage in Humboldt Park, according to the CTA. And $1.1 million will be used on workforce development to train CTA employees on using and maintaining electric buses.
The CTA did not say how the rest of the grant funds will be spent.
The city has committed to an all-electric bus fleet by 2040, and the grant from the Federal Transit Administration moves it closer to that, according to the CTA. The CTA’s bus fleet includes about 1,800 vehicles.
There are more than 20 electric buses along the No. 66 route between Austin and the Near West Side and Navy Pier, and the agency plans to deploy electric buses to the 95th/Dan Ryan Red Line terminal “in the next few years,” according to the agency.
The CTA plans to prioritize electric buses for routes that serve South and West side neighborhoods that have been “overburdened by air quality issues” so they can benefit from the environmental benefits of the buses, agency officials said.
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