Costa Rica launches plan to adopt electric buses

Costa Rica will launch this year a pilot plan to electrify its transportation in buses, with 15 units that will circulate throughout the country, the government and businesspeople announced Thursday.

These are 12 buses purchased by companies in the sector and three others provided by the German cooperation agency (GIZ), which will allow testing electric buses in different areas of the country.

“This is a step forward in the modernization of public transport and in the user experience,” said first lady Claudia Dobles, presenting the program at Casa Presidencial.

She said that buses, which will begin to circulate at the end of this year, will provide information on the behavior of electric transport in the geographical and climatic conditions of the country.

Costa Rican authorities will also receive information on the experience of Latin American countries with electric buses, such as Chile, Mexico and Colombia.

They will circulate on 12 routes in downtown San José, mountainous areas and coastal areas to help prepare the country for the spread of electric transport.

Silvia Bolaños, an entrepreneur in the sector, recalled that the 2017 electric transport law contemplates the replacement of units driven with conventional fuels by electric buses.

Thus, the pilot plan “will allow us to have reliable information on yields, autonomy and the technology recommended for each route.”

For his part, the Minister of the Environment, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, quoted the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who recently warned that “the use of fossil fuels is incompatible with life in the medium term.”

He recalled that Costa Rica launched in 2018 its National Decarbonization Plan that seeks to suppress the use of these fuels by 2050, and mass transport is a central component of that goal.

“This investment (in electric buses) will generate a lot of benefit not only to companies and users, but to the country,” Rodriguez said.