County learns an expensive lesson from taxpayers’ pockets

Miami-Dade officials vowed five years ago to put us on the cutting edge of electric bus technology. Today we’re bleeding at that cutting edge as we try to put the bus decision into reverse.

It was a classic case of a glittering new toy to play with using taxpayer cash. Today the county is admitting that not all was gold that glittered – it was just fool’s gold.

Problems began in October 2019 when the county contracted to buy 75 all-electric buses from a firm named Proterra. If you didn’t hear about Proterra before, you won’t in the future: since it got the county’s $72.2 million contract it has delivered 69 buses and exploded in bankruptcy, leaving the county to battle major bus quality, parts and servicing problems.

The purchase was divisive in 2019, even as the gleaming innovator with its glittering new technology was dazzling many figures in the county.

On a December day when the county was buying other buses powered by CNG, Mayor Carlos Gimenez was telling commissioners “I want as much as possible to be electric if it fits our need. I want to make sure that’s the direction I get from this board too.”

But commission Vice Chairman Rebeca Sosa was dubious about how smart buying electric buses would be, saying they could be made obsolete by future technology. “The reality is the price, the space, everything of the preparation for that era is going to be very hard to do,” she said. 

After pressing transportation director Alice Bravo whether the county then had the means to handle the already-issued Proterra contract, Ms. Bravo conceded that no fueling provision for electric buses yet existed here.

But Commissioner Eileen Higgins was firmly in the electric bus camp, telling commissioners “Guess what, guys, we’re going to eventually have to do it, and the sooner we do it the better.”

At that time, just after the commission’s Oct. 3 vote to buy 75 Proterra electric buses, the county’s fleet had 754 buses – 301 CNG, 316 diesel, 137 hybrid, and exactly zero electrics.

Proterra was one of three bidders, including New Flyer of America, a 100-year-old bus producer that is now selling other buses to the county. Proterra was a bus startup whose website boasted of sales to 90 cities but only 700 buses ever sold – an average of fewer than seven per sale. Miami-Dade took 75 and never got them all before the company folded. 

The county vote came after Proterra CEO Ryan Popple told commissioners he applauded them for “bold leadership” and “disciplined approach in exploring this innovation.”

Not disciplined enough exploration.

“Proterra was a battery company that decided to build buses,” Sean Adgerson, deputy director of the Department of Transportation and Public Works, explained to the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust last week. That became clear when Proterra was broken up in bankruptcy: “the battery component sold for over $200 million, their transit bus division sold for $10 million. That gives you a perspective of where their real intellectual property was and their expertise.”

“A lot of the issues that Proterra had is just related to … building a quality bus,” he said.

As to New Flyer, an old-line bus builder that the county bypassed in 2019 in favor of the glittering “innovation” of Proterra, Mr. Adgerson said “They know how to build a bus. They just have moved to using full electric as their power train…. We feel much better about using them and having them as a resource because they understand how to build a bus.” Not sexy, but New Flyer buses run.

“If there was a lesson learned,” Mr. Adgerson told the trust, “I think slowing down a little bit and letting that bleeding edge technology cut others before we get cut was probably a better way of dealing with as things emerge in the marketplace. To me, that’s the lesson learned.”

Another lesson should have been not to buy more than you need. Asked by trust member Peggy Bell “so are we going to have to at some point get six more buses?” Mr. Adgerson said that they were never necessary in the first place. “We’re not going to actually need the additional six buses.”

“It must have been very attractive at the time having this shining company that specializes in batteries and now they want to devolve into buses,” said trust Chairman Robert Wolfarth. “How long were they building buses before the county went under contract with them?”

“I’m not sure,” said Mr. Adgerson, who firmly distanced himself from the bus contact.

“OK, that’s what I thought,” said Mr. Wolfarth, who called it “a good learning process how to do procurement in the future.”

That learning cost the county taxpayers six undelivered buses and a fleet of 69 highly problematic electric buses.

And all-electric buses? At the time of the contract 10 companies were making and selling them. Five years later just two remain. At the cutting edge, even the manufacturers bled to death.