Featured photo: Local and state officials come together with Flint MTA board members and staff to celebrate the fact Flint is completing its switch to clean energy public transportation!
Written by Tanya Terry, with photos by Tanya Terry
The Flint MTA is replacing the last two diesel buses in their fleet. The announcement came less than one week after President Joe Biden signed an executive order establishing a new Office of Environmental Justice at the White House.
Mayor Sheldon Neeley stated Flint is “a point of light for the rest of the nation,” at the Flint MTA Hydrogen Bus Event held April 26.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who spoke at the event in Grand Blanc Township, stated investing in clean energy in communities that have disproportionately bore the brunt of pollution is crucial.
Through conversations with area representatives, Whitmer said she learned MTA riders love the opportunity to travel in quieter, cleaner buses.
“Hydrogen buses emit only water vapor and liquid water, the same as a humidifier in your house,” said Whitmer.
Whitmer said the second benefit of hydrogen buses is lower costs.
“Hydrogen buses can be fueled as quickly as diesel buses,” she said. “Also liquified hydrogen costs less than diesel, saving Flint taxpayers and the MTA money that they can use to expand and improve service.”
Over the last few months, Flint has won competitive grants to help them better serve the community. One is a $260,000 grant from the American Rescue Plan to restore services impacted by the pandemic. The second is a $4.3 million grant from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help MTA purchase or lease American-made low or no-emission buses.
The second grant will be used to purchase two, new hydrogen fuel cell buses and expand MTA’s hydrogen fueling station in Grand Blanc.
Vern Beasley, MTA driver, highlighted the fact that when COVID hit, MTA did not close. During this time, Beasley helped provide food to seniors and organizations such as New Paths, Inc.
“I feed 162 people every Sunday at First Presbyterian,” stated Beasley. “During COVID, when it got real, real cold, Mr. Benning allowed me to take a bus down there, and they could sit on the bus because they didn’t let them inside the church. So, I had a warming center.”
Ed Benning, MTA director, said in 2010 Flint MTA built a station generating 77 kegs of hydrogen a day, enough to fuel two buses. The first bus, in 2011, came through the Nutmeg Program, a program to test hydrogen in our country. The Flint MTA leased a vehicle and bought it over time.
“But in 2016, we reached out and bought an all-American built hydrogen fuel cell vehicle,” added Benning. “It’s a phenomenal vehicle. For those that may not be familiar with hydrogen, when we use electricity and water, through electrolysis, to create our hydrogen-that hydrogen creates electricity for a very small electric motor.”
Benning added the water coming out the tailpipe of the vehicle, which he, the governor and other officials got off that day when arriving at the event, was clean enough for a person to make coffee with.
“We’re now moving to bring in the next two hydrogen vehicles, and those vehicles will be here within the next hopefully 18 months,” Benning stated. “In addition to that, we’ll be expanding our station slightly. But we just put in for an FTA grant for $52 million. That grant will allow us to bring 20 more hydrogen vehicles to our community and give us 23 in total. In addition to that, we’ll have a storage building for safe storage…and we will also expand the station to fuel 60 buses a day. We’ll have one of the largest hydrogen operations in the Midwest, and it’s going to help us in the days when we move forward.
According to Benning, Flint MTA was using 2.3 million gallons of diesel a year. Last year, Flint MTA used only 30,000 gallons.
Zach Kolodin, chief infrastructure officer for the State of Michigan, pointed out hydrogen is as clean as the electricity that makes it, and said “Flint is ahead by a decade.” Kolodin said “visionaries” like Benning and Neeley have put Flint in a position to decarbonize its fleet, but also to attract clean energy jobs to the region. He said the Flint MTA project is a project that can help decarbonize the state’s transportation sector, as well as clean up the air in an environmental justice community.
Kolodin said: “So, I think it’s such a powerful synthesis of the way that mitigating climate change can also improve the quality of life for everyday Michiganders.”
