A Texas Town has the State’s First All-EV School Bus Fleet – Canary Media
Keith Kimbrough is the first to admit that electric school buses were not an easy sell in the tiny unincorporated town of Martinsville.
In Martinsville, which sits just outside of Nacogdoches in the Piney Woods region of East Texas, pickup trucks are the vehicle of choice, and oil field jobs are prevalent.
Diesel exhaust is not top of mind.
And yet the modest school district here has become the first in the state to entirely replace its diesel school bus fleet with no-emissions electric buses. Martinsville Independent School District applied for and received a $1.6 million grant last year from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Its Clean School Bus Program — funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 — is investing $5 billion to replace existing school buses with zero-emissions and low-emissions models across the country, especially in school districts that serve rural areas or low-income students.
Martinsville ISD began running its morning and afternoon routes with the new buses in late October 2023.
