Four battery-powered electric buses will begin traveling up and down Northeast Lancaster Drive in mid-September. By Thanksgiving of this year, the fleet of 10 electric buses will be traveling the “electric corridor,” a name for the all-electric route.
On Wednesday, August 15, the Salem Area Mass Transit District (or Cherriots) invited community members and government officials to the grand opening of the district’s first electric bus fleet.
The electric buses will run on Route 11, which begins at the Keizer Transit Center and ends at the Marion County Jail. The long 12-mile route will be Cherriots’ first zero-emissions route in his district.
Cherriots Board President Maria Hinojos Pressey said Route 11 is an opportunity to invest in historically marginalized communities as the route runs from northeast to southeast of Salem.
The neighborhoods along the route are lower-income and have a higher proportion of Latinos. Cherriots CEO Allan Pollock previously said the demographics along the route ensure that a broad spectrum of Salemite residents will benefit from the reduced noise and air pollution from the buses.
The high volume of passengers on the route also makes it a good candidate for the new buses, said Hinojos Pressey.
“We strive for a greener, sustainable future for our children and families,” she told the crowd.
In January of this year, the Salem Reporter reported that Cherriots received federal funding through the Low-No Emissions Grant in 2020, 2021 and 2023. The grants totaled $22.7 million and funded the purchase of buses and charging stations in addition to the district’s capital expenditures.
In a grant proposal, the agency said an electric bus would reduce Cherriots’ annual energy use by 5,234 gigajoules, equivalent to the gasoline consumption of an average American car in 87 years.
Cherriots worked with Gillig, ChargePoint, Salem Electric and PGE to purchase and power the buses.
Cherriot’s Chief Operations Officer Tom Dietz said it costs $1.3 million to build one electric bus, and another 10 buses are scheduled to be built in December 2025. Operating and maintenance costs are not currently known, but Dietz said they will know that information in about a year, after the electric buses have been running for a while.
Cherriots originally thought the electric buses would need to be charged daily, but during a trial run on Route 11, one electric bus used only 13 percent of its charge, Dietz said. The bus batteries have a half-life of six years and, when they begin to age, are used to power other parts of the facility.
Among the officials in attendance Wednesday was U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, who helped secure funding to build the small electric fleet. Merkley said U.S. Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Andrea Salinas also pushed for the money.
“This is part of a vision of rebuilding and transformation,” Merkley said. “Mother Nature isn’t giving us little cues that we need to act, she’s hitting us over the head with a hammer.”
After speaking at the event and attending the opening, Merkley took guests on one of the electric buses to Cherriots’ Del Webb industrial site. There, Merkley took the electric bus for a spin around the site.
Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: (email protected).
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Madeleine Moore is a reporter at the Salem Reporter as part of the University of Oregon’s Charles Snowden Internship Program. She came to Salem after graduating from the University of Oregon with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in June 2024.
