The Union Station bus deck in Washington, D.C., is a loud and smelly place. Municipal and inter-city buses rumble in and out, perfuming the semi-enclosed depot with the stench of combusted diesel. The arrival of a lone battery electric bus on a recent weekday morning—one of fourteen electric buses that have just been added to D.C. Metro’s Circulator fleet—did not radically change the atmosphere. But it could be a tantalizing harbinger of things to come. The vehicle moves stealthily, with a low whine, and emits no fumes from its tailpipe, because it doesn’t have one.
Needless to say, a bus station served only by electric buses would be unrecognizable to the nose and ears. So would a whole city.
