Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (R-NY) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, introduced their plan to replace polluting buses with clean buses Tuesday.
The senators introduced their Clean Transit for American Plan that would provide $73 billion to replace at least 70,000 mass transit buses with zero-emission buses in a push to combat climate change, improve air quality and establish a transit workforce training program that will create good-paying union jobs.
“To reduce the carbon in our atmosphere and address the climate crisis, we must transform our transit system,” Schumer said. “The Clean Transit for America proposal will replace dirty, diesel-spewing buses, create new American jobs, help save the planet and protect public health, particularly in our country’s most vulnerable communities. That is why I am working to make sure this proposal is part of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan.”
Currently, only 2 percent of U.S. buses are zero-emission vehicles. Pollutants from the existing diesel buses disproportionally impact low-income communities and communities of color, the senators’ offices said in a statement. Money from the senators’ plan would specifically be used to replace mass transit buses, cutaway vehicles, and transit vans with clean energy vehicles, prioritizing funding for the areas with the worst air quality first.
“Americans deserve world-class public transportation that is delivered with modern, zero-emission buses built by American workers,” Brown said. “Addressing climate change and reducing pollution is an opportunity to invest in American workers. The Clean Transit for America Plan will create a significant number of good-paying, union jobs building zero-emission buses in the U.S. It is the kind of transformative investment we need in public transit that will put Americans to work, connects people with opportunity, and invests in the communities that have been left on their own by Washington and Wall Street for too long.”
The plan is supported by several groups, including the IBEW, the League of Conservation Voters, the Transport Workers Union, the Sierra Club, the American Public Transportation Association, the Moms Clean Air Force, and the AFL-CIO.
“As president of the IBEW, the largest union of electrical workers in the country, I want to thank Majority Leader Schumer and Senator Brown for their ambitious Clean Transit for America proposal,” said IBEW International President Lonnie R. Stephenson. “This plan will create tens of thousands of jobs for IBEW members around the country by modernizing our nation’s mass transit buses to zero-emission vehicles. In particular, we strongly support the incorporation of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program (EVITP) into the plan, which will ensure charging infrastructure financed by this proposal is done by highly skilled electricians. The IBEW looks forward to working with Leader Schumer, Senator Brown, and the United States Senate to move this proposal forward and fulfill the promise to build America back better.”