Governments of Canada and British Columbia Jointly Investing $395.5m in Electrification of Public Transit in BC

The governments of Canada and British Columbia will jointly invest more than $395.5 million to support public transit in British Columbia. Through this investment, BC Transit will purchase up to 115 Battery Electric Buses (BEBs) and install 134 charging points to enable the deployment of the new buses in communities across British Columbia.

Increasing the number of BEBs in service will help expand clean public transportation options, which contributes to the Government of Canada’s objective of putting 5,000 zero-emission public transit and school buses on Canada’s roads by 2026, and aligns with British Columbia’s CleanBC emission-reduction goals as well as BC Transit’s transition to an electric fleet by 2040.

The Government of Canada is contributing $82,019,527 to these projects through the Zero Emission Transit Fund (ZETF) and $87,860,437 through the Public Transit Infrastructure Stream (PTIS) of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) for a total investment of $169,879,964. The Government of British Columbia is contributing $158,669,826 and recipients are contributing $67,355,727.

The ZETF is closely coordinated with the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s Zero Emission Bus Initiative through which the CIB has committed more than $1.5 billion to supporting the deployment of zero emission buses.

The Public Transit Infrastructure Stream of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program supports the building, expansion, and upgrading of urban and rural transit networks. Including this latest announcement, 51 infrastructure projects or project bundles under the Public Transit Infrastructure Stream have been funded in British Columbia, with a total federal contribution of more than $2.5 billion and a total provincial contribution of nearly $3.82 billion.

Under the Investing in Canada Plan, the federal government is investing more than $180 billion over 12 years in public transit projects, green infrastructure, social infrastructure, trade and transportation routes, and Canada’s rural and northern communities.

The Government of Canada is investing $14.9 billion over the next eight years in reliable, fast, affordable, and clean public transit. This funding includes $3 billion per year in permanent, predictable federal public transit funding which will be available to support transit solutions beginning in 2026-27.

Since 2015, the Government of Canada has invested more than $24.8 billion in transit projects across the country.