MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) installed its first charging station for battery-electric buses at the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa on Wednesday.
It is part of Milwaukee County's East-West Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line. MCTS's nine-mile line is scheduled to begin service in June 2023 and will go through downtown Milwaukee, the city's Near West Side, Marquette University, Wauwatosa, and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center.
According to MCTS, the new BRT route will come with two battery-electric bus (BEB) charging stations - one at the end of each line. The first is operating at Watertown Plank and the second will be built at BRT's starting point at the Couture in downtown Milwaukee, MCTS says.
Each bus battery will be topped off every third lap of the 18-mile roundtrip route for nine minutes to ensure BEB batteries are fully functioning. Each night, the fleet of battery electric buses will be charged for about two hours overnight, MCTS says. The battery-electric buses can operate up to 247 miles on a single charge, according to MCTS.
The first of the 11 buses will arrive in November and an additional four will arrive in 2023.
For more information on the transit line, visit the East/West BRT website.
