Blueprinting Electrified Transit System Implementation

Electrifying transportation requires a substantial and rapid upgrade to the electric power system, including the installation of millions of charging endpoints. Strategic planning is necessary to achieve the benefits of electrification using the limited resources available. The standard approach for charging infrastructure planning has been limited in scope, has relied on heuristic and ad hoc design methodologies, and risks misallocating resources, leading to an underutilized, over specified system. By leveraging data and computing resources, simulation models can represent the transportation and electric power systems with high fidelity, enabling highly informed and comprehensive evaluation of potential deployment scenarios. Together with high performance computing and mathematical optimization tools, models can be used to explore vast solution spaces to identify optimal system configurations in terms of cost, greenhouse gas emissions, and human health impacts. These kinds of capabilities o?er a powerful alternative to heuristic and ad hoc electrification planning; the challenge is for planning entities to access them. The public transit system is an ideal candidate for preliminary demonstration of these types of planning tools. The proposal for Phase I work is to investigate and evaluate electrification scenarios for a sample transit agency serving disadvantaged populations in San Bernardino, California, using a suite of high-fidelity system modeling and optimization tools. This will serve as a means of building up the capabilities of the tool suite, to illustrate the potential of comprehensive optimal planning, and to work toward actionable plans for a real transit system. In Phase II and beyond, the suite of tools will be enhanced in terms of fidelity, scope, and flexibility. In the same way that a comprehensive plan for a municipal transit agency improves on an ad hoc, bus- by-bus approach, a comprehensive plan for a city ľ or county, or state, including all modes of transport ľ o?ers successively more benefits. Building the tool suite to be mode agnostic from the beginning will enable rapid analysis of a diverse array of transportation segments, including public charging systems for passenger cars, depot and public chargers for commercial vehicles and fleets, and even electric rail and aircraft. This company aims to make high complexity planning services available to transit agencies, fleets, and government bodies, for whom it would otherwise be prohibitive in terms of cost and expertise. If done optimally, transportation electrification o?ers critical benefits to the public, including improved human health outcomes, reduced cost of travel and goods movement, and climate change mitigation, with equitable distributions of costs and benefits.