Go Durham Electric Vehicle Charging Plan

The Durham Transportation Department (DTD) currently provides service on 20 routes with a fleet of 57 vehicles, 7 days/week.

The City of Durham is committed to transitioning to a fully electric fleet by 2035 and intends to acquire battery-electric buses.

The Contractor shall provide a Charging Management Plan to the City describing how it will integrate electric buses into the fleet, including potential changes in blocks and run-cutting to match service requirements, capital investments that may be necessary by the City to support electric vehicles, etc.

SYSTRA Canada, in partnership with RATP Dev USA, assumed this mandate. The scope included:

Data Consumption Analysis

An estimation of the on-route electrical consumption and vehicle range was carried out based on Open-Source data and data from Go Durham. Using the available data, the analysis considered the current context such as routes, vehicles, environment, weather, etc. This estimation of on-route electrical consumption was then being used to draft multiple electrified route scenarios.

Block Schedule Creation

Previously established consumption hypotheses and GTFS data were inputted in SYSTRA’s scheduling tool, Wild Turkey, to generate a fully electrical schedule. This tool generated vehicle timetables that consider route stops, deadheads, and depot location