I do like to follow up and keep you all on top of where things stand with some of the previous stories I've covered. Sometimes, it's true, there's not much to write about because whatever happened happened and then they lie there like a dead bug until they shrivel and go away of their own accord.
In other cases, there can be happier resolutions, which is always cheerful news, but those are admittedly rare.
Most wind up in the slow-rolling disaster column, and man - that does seem to be the case with the Biden administration's $1.6B push to electrify city transit fleets.
...E-buses have been purchased by transit agencies in part through a "Low-No" emissions grant program mainly through the Federal Transit Administration that received a $1.6 billion infusion during the Biden years.
"Given the scale of this investment, there must be an examination into whether taxpayers are receiving the reliable, deployable transit assets capable of serving the communities for which they were funded," Power the Future (PTF) President Daniel Turner said.
With similar dismal results for the Coconut Queen's electric school bus handouts, however giddy she was announcing it.
...Similarly, PTF highlighted a 2024 EPA Inspector General audit that found the agency failed to meaningfully track the deployment of electric school buses under a 2022 rebate program through which $836 million was handed out by federal officials.
I LOVE ELECTRIC SCHOOL BUSES! RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU WENT TO SCHOOL ON A SCHOOL BUS!
Biden’s day: Gets a Special Counsel
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 12, 2023
Kamala: "I'm excited about electric school buses! I love electric school buses! I just love them for so many reasons! Maybe b/c I went to school on a school bus? Raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus!!!" pic.twitter.com/TzX0LTRA8e
Oh, thank GOD we've been spared further exposure to this mind-numbing numbskull.
Let me 'splain that the daffy chica herself is the source of the coconut sobriquet...
...and I was one of many others who thought it was perfect.
Vibe Memories pic.twitter.com/LVg9Si5jBc
— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) July 21, 2025
Enough said (and you know who you are).
In March, I had a field day posting some of the latest news that had come in on both the urban and school district E-bus experiments. Tragically for the tax dollars involved, and, in some cases, the health, comfort, and well-being of the kiddos on the buses, most were abysmal disappointments and many flat-out disasters.
There were mechanical issues galore, scary fires that thankfully erupted in unoccupied vehicles but consumed the fleet in some cases, and maintenance/parts problems arising from bankrupt bus manufacturers that seemed insurmountable.
Tellingly, data was also now available from some of the school districts that had first adopted the E-buses, and the promised affordability was nowhere to be found. This was causing considerable consternation.
...This is with the Naples (NY) School District running only two electric school buses, both of which had initially paid for by federal grants, etc.
36 cents per mile for diesel and $3.18 per mile for electric
As for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), now trying to determine if the public has received 'reliable, deployable transit assets capable of serving the communities for which they were funded,' investigators will have to look no further than the area of Miami-Dade, Florida, and the nearby metropolitan county of Broward.
In that March post, I had a short paragraph on it, the Xweet below about Broward's E-bus lot, and noted that, between them, the two had spent $126M on buses and on building charging stations.
Broward County Transit purchased 42 electric buses from a California based manufacturer for $54 million
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 4, 2026
The electric busses don’t work, broke down every 600 miles and the company went bankrupt
Now these $54 million dollar busses paid for by your taxes just sit here abandoned pic.twitter.com/7ZvNAaETFN
The local TV station has recently been doing some sniffing around the bus lots and asking uncomfortable questions of city and county leaders in both areas. The dollar amounts associated are gobsmacking.
Ninety-six million dollars’ worth of electric buses sit idle across South Florida, some parked in a landfill, others lined up at the Homestead Air Reserve Base.
...Across South Florida, dozens of electric buses purchased with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars remain parked and out of service, more than a year after they were pulled from the road.
Right now, no one knows exactly what comes next.
In Miami-Dade, frustration is growing inside County Hall.
Roberto Gonzalez and Natalie Milian Orbis co-sponsored a resolution in January requiring the administration of Daniella Levine Cava to produce a detailed report outlining what went wrong with the county’s electric bus fleet and what the plan is moving forward.
The resolution gave the mayor 30 days to deliver that report.
That deadline has now come and gone.
No report has been publicly released.
“If these buses are not working efficiently, not out there saving the environment and not out there servicing the residents of Miami-Dade County, then we need to get that money back,” Gonzalez said.
Milian Orbis called the situation a red flag and said the county cannot afford to let millions of dollars sit idle without a plan.
For some reason, the Miami-Dade County mayor is reluctant to turn loose of her derelict buses, and she's got a loaded lot.
In Broward County, they're trying to work with the feds to just unload all of these worthless buses, but you can't fault them for not trying. They even bought E-buses from a different company.
...Thirty-one electric buses are currently sitting in a remote section of a landfill off U.S. 27, each one costing roughly $1.1 million.
Coree Cuff Lonergan said the buses “continued to fail” and described the situation as “a deep disappointment.”
“We absolutely did our best to keep the buses on the road,” she said.
She also revealed that problems are not limited to Proterra buses.
“We did take delivery of two additional buses from a different manufacturer and they do not work either,” she said.
I totally get the frustration. But, woof.
That's a lot of cha-ching rotting away.
...In Miami-Dade, the buses remain parked.
At the Homestead Air Reserve Base, rows of electric buses sit idle in what has become one of the most visible symbols of the problem. Sky 10 counted dozens of buses stored there.
Additional buses are stored at the Northeast Bus Facility near Miami Gardens Drive.
Together, they represent a significant public investment that is currently delivering no return.
Miami-Dade Transit confirms 69 Proterra buses were purchased at a cost of $61.8 million, including federal, state, and local surtax funding.
So there had been a divergence of opinions between the two counties. For whatever reason, the Miami-Dade approach was stalling until they formulated some sort of rescue plan. Maybe even swap for more E-buses, as the mayor seems to be a confirmed cultist. I haven't the first clue, and neither do some county commissioners, as they are getting pretty irate.
In Broward, they've been working with the feds on a plan to be done with the entire failed experiment and perhaps claw back some of the money they wasted.
...In Miami-Dade, commissioners are still waiting for a report that was due weeks ago.
In Broward, officials are waiting on the federal government before they can move forward with disposal or recovery.
Questions remain about the cost and reliability of electric transit fleets moving forward.
Miami Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez has raised concerns about the financial reality, saying electric buses can be far more expensive to operate than diesel models. “It takes much more money to operate the electric one as opposed to the diesel one,” he said.
Still, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is standing by the county’s commitment to electrification. She said Miami-Dade plans to continue moving forward with electric buses, adding that she believes electric vehicles remain the future despite the current setbacks.
Levine Cava said a detailed report on the county’s electric bus fleet will be released to commissioners in the near future.
But now there's been a new wrinkle that throws all the planning into chaos. Everyone knows that federal largesse, aka 'grant money,' is never free, and it turns out that's true even if it was as green as the stripe on a rainbow unicorn's mane.
This UH-OH is putting the 'P' in panic, but again, the two counties are looking at handling it differently. The bottom line is that the terms of the grant used to purchase the bus specified that the bus had to remain in service for 12 years or 500,000 miles, or the grant money (or a proportion thereof) had to be returned.
Local 10 News has learned that because federal grant money funded a significant portion of the electric bus fleets in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, there are federal guidelines tied to how long those buses are expected to remain in service.
If the buses are taken out of service early, counties may have to repay a portion of that federal funding.
That possibility is now driving decisions in both counties in very different ways.
In Broward County, transit officials have formally asked the Federal Transit Administration for forgiveness in an effort to avoid paying that money back.
“And so one of the things that we are, the application that we submitted to the FTA is for us to be able to get forgiveness from them so that we do not have to reimburse them for the funds that they have provided to us and also to be able to dispose of them,” said Coree Cuff Lonergan, CEO and general manager of Broward County Transit.
In Miami-Dade County, leaders are taking a different approach.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is still trying to find a way to get the buses back on the road.
“We are still hopeful we can still put them into service. The company that is the successor company is not able to give us the level of service we need,” she said.
Broward is basically throwing itself on the mercy of the federal government, while the dewy-eyed mayor of Miami-Dade wants to try scrounging up Proterra parts from other cities in the same exact busted E-bus boat across the country (and there are plenty of those, believe you me). Good luck, girlfriend.
I think they need to scrounge up a new mayor, but that's just me.
The scramble is on.
And that's my update...so far.
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