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trevorhayden said:
Shit happens. Sucks but move on.
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We can’t be too quick to “move on”. It was a massive failure in terms of QA, procurement, risk assessment, etc.

We are badly short buses and this has made the problem way worse. The staff behind this decision should have been relieved imo.

Lessons have hopefully been learned?

Shit happens, but a lot more happens when people make dumb decisions. This wasn’t a “whoops”, it was a huge mismanagement of scarce funds for critical capacity increases to our fleet. (Not to mention all the extra staff training and equipment connected to these that had to be retrofitted into the garage for R&M).
 
I wonder why they didn't go with the New Flyer EVs? Maybe these ones were cheaper, but surely the Flyer would have required less staff training and new equipment since they would share a lot of parts with the diesel models.

Did anything ever come from the legal action the city was taking against Proterra?
 
thommyjo said:
The staff behind this decision should have been relieved imo.
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Why?
They certainly did their due diligence. They tested 5 buses, 3 during winter from 2 vendors. They had a feasibility study done that provide numbers that were in favour of electric buses, and then they used a competitive procurement process and they selected the best response.
Short of a whistleblower coming out and saying that the internal selection process was rigged or something.
Additionally, it's not like other vendors buses from the same era have done well. The TTC has parked their fleets of Proterra, BYD, and New Flyer electric buses from the same timeframe.
Shit happens.
 
EdwardEdm said:
Why?
They certainly did their due diligence. They tested 5 buses, 3 during winter from 2 vendors. They had a feasibility study done that provide numbers that were in favour of electric buses, and then they used a competitive procurement process and they selected the best response.
Short of a whistleblower coming out and saying that the internal selection process was rigged or something.
Additionally, it's not like other vendors buses from the same era have done well. The TTC has parked their fleets of Proterra, BYD, and New Flyer electric buses from the same timeframe.
Shit happens.
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did they?

“Of particular note, Proterra was not one of the companies whose buses were tested in 2015-16. Despite that, and despite the fact they were one of the newest players in the market, they won the city’s competitive bid process.”

IMG_5725.jpeg


5 weeks of testing during a very warm winter. That’s due diligence? I’d think tens of thousands of kms over multiple winters would be worthwhile being making a significant order of this size on brand new tech.

Full city report: https://pub-edmonton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=21881


To me, it seems like a huge expense and risk with very limited testing. When considering a new technology, that we know is impacted by our climate, this seems insufficient.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t believe I’ve seen anything about another city with our climate having used these buses reliably either. So that feels like a flag too.
 
EdwardEdm said:
Why?
They certainly did their due diligence. They tested 5 buses, 3 during winter from 2 vendors. They had a feasibility study done that provide numbers that were in favour of electric buses, and then they used a competitive procurement process and they selected the best response.
Short of a whistleblower coming out and saying that the internal selection process was rigged or something.
Additionally, it's not like other vendors buses from the same era have done well. The TTC has parked their fleets of Proterra, BYD, and New Flyer electric buses from the same timeframe.
Shit happens.
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It's also notable that the COVID-related supply chain issues and resulting cost inflation against fixed price contracts are what has been publicly ascribed to Proterra's bankruptcy (albeit, I suspect COVID was the straw the broke the camel's back). There are limits to the extent of due diligence you can reasonably do and forecasting financial solvency through a global pandemic is difficult to evaluate during a procurement process. Even with the assumption that a relatively young startup does carry a significantly higher degree of risk than an established player, it's still only one component of a long list of considerations within a procurement matrix.

In a different world where COVID doesn't happen literally a year after the City proceeds with the purchase, and possibly Proterra is still around, this probably ends up not being a major story. If the City had been able to work more directly with Proterra for a number of years before the inevitable chapter 11 filing, they might have been able to work out a lot more of the kinks and build internal R&M/engineering knowledge to keep the fleet going for longer.

That all said, reading how a number of bus drivers refused to even drive them due to their piss poor ergonomics does make you do shake your head.
 
IanO said:
That said, I am generally supportive of a more efficient transit system as we must continue to shift modal shares and make it a more attractive option to far more people.
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Keeping in mind the growth of our city and inflation for context, the last council spent more on active transportation, public transportation and on vehicle infrastructure all at the same time. I believe Knack noted during the election that the previous council spent more on roads than any of the other councils he was on and Janz shared that since 2010, Edmonton has added more roads than all of Montreal has today.

I wonder if shifting modal shares is going to have to mean spending less on new and widening roads at some point as some cities that noticed big changes in modal % decided to do - things like reducing parking, narrowing roads, repurposing roads for other uses etc.?

Will mode shift really occur in any substantive way if driving remains the easiest, fastest, most convenient choice and where parking is plentiful?

Is it financially sustainable to have record spending on all 3 primary modes of transportation - active, public and single vehicular ongoing?
 
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TAS said:
Is it financially sustainable to have record spending on all 3 primary modes of transportation - active, public and single vehicular ongoing?
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The biggest priority with transportation is to provide options.

As for me? I'll walk, bike, drive or take public transit/LRT depending on the distance, location, weather, scheduling, and convenience.
 
Plus they lost huge ridership when the LRT was down as well - was it one day or two? Buses probably offset those losses somewhat, but still had to be down significantly.
 
ETSAB:

“In January 2026, ETS recorded 5.2 million riders, representing a nearly 4% decrease from January 2025. Bus ridership followed a similar trend, decreasing roughly 3.5% from 3.73 million in 2025 to 3.60 million in 2026. The Valley Line Southeast (VLSE) recorded 245,619 riders, a 3.6% decrease from the 254,934 riders carried in January 2025.”
 
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