Pinellas County transit to receive largest grant to date for electric buses

Pinellas County’s public transit agency will soon add 16 new electric and hybrid buses to its fleet, thanks to a grant from the Federal Transit Administration for $27.8 million.

It’s the largest grant the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority has ever received through a competitive process, agency spokesperson Stephanie Weaver said.

The money will go toward purchasing 12 electric buses, 12 chargers and four hybrid buses, said Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Transportation. The transit authority can also use some of the money for workforce training and hiring to staff the new buses.

It’s the second grant Pinellas County has received from the Federal Transit Administration for electric buses. The first was in 2022, for $18 million to pay for 12 electric buses.

“The new buses will be cleaner,” Trottenberg said at a news conference Tuesday. “They’ll be quieter — and hopefully have longer running times and be safer as well.”

The transit authority has been chipping away at replacing its buses with electric ones. The agency plans to eliminate diesel buses from the fleet over the next several years, wrote transit authority CEO Brad Miller in 2021.

Eight electric buses are on the streets right now, with the authority expecting a total of 20 in use by October. With the money from this new grant, the fleet’s electric buses will eventually number more than 30. The authority also received $18 million to purchase buses from Volkswagen’s federal settlement over claims it had violated the Clean Air Act.

The federal grants were especially competitive this year, Trottenberg said. Out of 477 applications, a quarter of them were accepted. The grant Pinellas County received was the largest in Florida, with Orlando, Gainesville, Broward County and Escambia County receiving similar amounts for sustainable bus purchases.

The Federal Transit Administration saw a special need for Pinellas County to modernize its bus fleet — its application was one of the best, Trottenberg said. She also pointed to the SunRunner, the rapid bus line between downtown St. Petersburg and St. Pete Beach, as a signal of St. Petersburg’s transit improvements.

“I think you all are really leaning into that next generation of transit investments,” Trottenberg said.