The city’s transport authority, Metrobús, is a decentralised public entity managing the bus rapid transit (BRT) service through a network spanning 283 stations, seven bus lines and 140 kilometres, which service 1.8 million daily riders.
Mexico City now has the largest fleet of articulated e-buses in Latin America and one of the largest worldwide.
The company have now announced that a new fleet of 50 articulated electric buses were formally incorporated into Line 3 of Mexico City’s public transport system.
Metrobus has a target to electrify its entire bus fleet by 2035. The company has sought technical assistance from the Zero-Emission Bus Rapid Deployment Accelerator to help reach this target. This partnership will be led by C40 Cities and the International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT), with support from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI).
Metrobus’s Line 3 was opened in 2011 and is 20.4km long and has 38 stations. ZEBRA supported Metrobus with the phase-out of its diesel-fuelled fleet with e-buses as the L3 reached its tenth year of operation.
The technical assistance provided facilitated electrification of Metrobús’s L3 line, along with documented learnings from a 2021 pilot, in which ten Yutong articulated electric buses were deployed. The e-bus fleet’s impressive performance persuaded both Metrobús and MIVSA (the BRT’s operator) to acquire more electric buses, stated C40’s report.
Technical assistance was made possible thanks to the political commitment secured by C40, through Mexico City’s inclusion as a signatory city in C40’s Green and Healthy Streets Accelerator, along with almost four years of technical assistance from ZEBRA’s partners.
This technical assistance included:
- Defining e-bus technical specifications;
- Monitoring and evaluation of the city’s first e-bus pilot fleet;
- E-bus route modelling and total cost of ownership (TCO) analyses;
- Support in waiving import fees for e-buses;
- Assessment of Metrobús’s financial model;
- Assessment and recommendation of the best credit options offered by financial institutions;
- Technical support to structure the city’s Request for Proposal documents and legal documentation;
- Recommendations surrounding the construction of charging infrastructure;
- Dissemination of Mexico City’s experience with other cities in the region.
Most technical assessments were conducted by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), and are publicly available. C40 and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) delivered complementary technical, legal and financial assistance relating to the RFP process.
Source: c40
