Trump vs. Electric buses
An electric bus in New York City.
Excerpted and edited from an ecoRI.org news story
The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) planned to introduce electric buses to operate on Aquidneck Island in the spring of this year, but federal funding for the project is being held up by the Trump administration.
President Trump inherited an “unprecedented backlog” of unobligated U.S. Department of Transportation grants when he took office in 2025.
One of those grants belongs to RIPTA. The transit agency’s CEO, Christopher Durand, told Rhode Island House Finance subcommittee members on March 10 that he doesn’t know if the funds will be released.
Nearly four years ago, RIPTA announced it would remove diesel-powered buses rolling along Aquidneck Island’s streets, following a U.S. Department of Transportation award of $22.37 million in federal funding to Rhode Island through the Biden administration’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant program.