Battery Electric Bus Fleet

In January 2016, RTD purchased 36 battery-electric buses from BYD Motors to operate the 16th Street Free MallRide service. The Free MallRide stops at every intersection along the 1.2-mile-long mall from Union Station to Civic Center Station, with a total travel time of about 15 minutes. Shuttles run approximately every light cycle during rush hours, and every 3 to 15 minutes all other times. These electric buses constitute one of the largest zero-emission, battery-electric-powered fleets in the United States.

RTD incrementally deployed these electric buses between December 2016 and February 2018. As of March 2020, this fleet had traveled over 1.2 million revenue and non-revenue miles. Since the buses do not have combustion engines, they are very quiet. Therefore, RTD has equipped the vehicles with noise generators to alert nearby pedestrians of an oncoming bus.

The electric bus fleet is charged overnight at the RTD Platte Maintenance Facility in the RiNo District in Denver. RTD has 30 plug-in depot chargers that charge each bus in about 3.5 hours. The electricity for these chargers comes from Xcel Energy. In October 2019, Xcel introduced an electric vehicle (EV) electricity rate that RTD has been using since January 2020.

If you have any questions regarding RTD’s electric bus fleet, please contact [email protected].