This Republican Senator is getting tired of telling Albany Democrats “I told you so”
A COLUMN by NYS Senator Tom O’Mara
With its long-planned shift to a zero-emissions bus fleet slowed by underperforming electric technology, the MTA plans to order 650 new coaches that rely on compressed natural gas.”
That was the opening paragraph in a recent news article out of New York City, where the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the largest public transportation system in the United States and all of North America, delivered the latest and most damning admission that electric buses are not ready for prime time.
It’s become tiresome to keep saying “I told you so” to Albany Democrats, but I and our entire Republican Conference have warned about this since the beginning of their unreasonable and unrealistic push for the electrification of everything under their Green New Deal CLCPA.
In fact, it’s become a bipartisan warning. An audit in August from State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli determined that the MTA “is unlikely to meet its 2040 target for replacing its 5,800-bus fleet with zero-emission buses.”
The comptroller said, “The MTA has set an ambitious goal to transform the nation’s largest bus fleet to 100 percent zero-emission. Unfortunately, this audit identified multiple challenges that have put its 2040 target in jeopardy.”
Now, shortly after the release of the comptroller’s audit, the MTA is pulling back.
The MTA currently has only 75 electric buses. It was supposed to receive 485 of the next 500 by the end of 2024, but only one bus had been delivered by June 2025, according to the comptroller’s office.
“The electric buses that we have tested so far have not been up to standards,” MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said at an unrelated press conference. “They break down too frequently.”
In addition to the unavailability and unreliability, the cost of the e-buses has grown from $1.3 million each to $1.8 million — far more expensive than a comparable CNG bus at $950,000. A CNG bus will last 12 to 14 years. An e-bus will need new batteries around year 7 at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.
The MTA’s experience is not unlike Ithaca’s TCAT foray into electric buses in 2021, when the seven e-buses they purchased ultimately had to be removed from service and decommissioned. Cornell researchers specifically characterized the buses as unreliable, with reduced range in cold weather and difficulty handling Ithaca’s hilly terrain.
It should send an even stronger message to Governor Kathy Hochul and the all-Democrat State Legislature that it’s time to reexamine some of their own unreasonable and unrealistic timelines imposing zero-emissions mandates on all New Yorkers.
At the top of that list is the all-electric school bus mandate still hanging over the heads of local school districts throughout our region and statewide. Again, it’s something that many of us have warned about, repeatedly, over the past several years.
While they have taken some half-steps in the other direction on forcing schools to go to all-electric school buses, they’ve mostly been actions aimed at trying to stem the ever-building tide of opposition from local school districts and property taxpayers, from the Legislature’s Senate and Assembly Republican conferences, and other independent analysts.
Despite mounting opposition to the Albany Democrats’ all-consuming climate law, the “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019,” better known as the CLCPA – and mounting evidence that it’s not working and won’t work under current timelines and conditions – all that’s been delivered out of Albany’s back rooms have been minor moves toward revisiting the CLCPA and implementing an obvious and badly needed change in direction.
Again, keep in mind that over the past seven years since the CLCPA’s approval — first by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and a Democrat-led Legislature, and accelerated by Governor Hochul and a Democrat-led Legislature ever since — the Senate and Assembly Republican Conferences have repeatedly offered alternative policies that we believe are more focused on affordability, feasibility, and reliability. It’s irresponsible for New York State to go on asking ratepayers to bear the burden of a strategy that’s not working and that won’t work as it stands. Ratepayers are reminded of that fact every month they receive their next unaffordable, unreasonable utility bill.
The smartest course of action, right now, would be to revisit the whole strategy. The recent MTA admission acknowledges that plenty has changed. What we have learned, above all, is that the current strategy is delivering a heavy price tag for ratepayers, one that will only get heavier as time goes on unless we change course.
I’ll say it again: That’s especially true for mandates like the all-electric school bus mandate. Up to now, Albany Democrats have only taken half-steps to try to buy a little more time on the mandate’s implementation. Not revisit the requirement entirely. Not reassess whether it’s workable or affordable. Not more adequately determine what it will cost. The truth is that very little has been done to ease the fears of local school districts and local property taxpayers facing what many of them believe would be the largest-ever unfunded state mandate if it keeps moving forward.
The current timeline for implementing New York State’s all-electric school bus mandate, even taking into account its latest extension, raises far too many troubling questions on affordability, as well as on reliability and safety for student transportation to simply delay it for a relatively brief period.
I have already joined Assemblyman Phil Palmesano to sponsor legislation (S1908/A5168) that, among other provisions, would delay the mandate’s implementation until at least 2045 and, more importantly, require cost-benefit and safety analyses before it can ever take effect. Our Western New York colleague, Senator George Borrello, has also introduced similar legislation (S4748), which I co-sponsor, to rescind the mandate and direct NYSERDA to conduct a study to determine the feasibility of converting school buses to zero-emission vehicles.
America’s largest public transportation system just admitted that its rush into an all-electric bus fleet isn’t working and won’t work. It’s an enormously expensive rush to nowhere.
Let’s hope Albany Democrats are paying attention and get their heads out of the clouds and back to reality.
