Greenlink receives federal funding for electric buses

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Greenville Transit Authority will receive more than $5 million in federal funding this year to purchase electric buses and install charging infrastructure.

The city’s transit authority, also known as Greenlink, is one of 41 recipients of the Federal Transit Administration’s 2020 Low or No-emission “Lo-No” Bus Program grants, according to the administration’s website. The grant amounts to $5,277,325.

Transit systems from 40 states and the District of Columbia were selected for the program, including North Carolina’s Charlotte Area Transit System, which received more than $3 million in funding, and Georgia’s Chatham Area Transit System, which received close to $2 million in funding, according to the site.

Greenlink has been awarded Lo-No funding in previous years, allowing the agency to purchase four electric buses from Proterra Inc.'s Greenville manufacturing facility last April, according to last year’s news release. At that time, local and state leadership matched the federal grants.

“If you want to be at the cutting edge of battery electric technology, you come to Greenville,” Mayor Knox White said in the release. “It should therefore be our aspiration that we have an all-electric fleet that uses the technology developed right here.”