New Jersey is adding to its efforts to cut medium- and heavy-duty vehicle emissions with plans to spend more than $300 million on electric bus garages and to increase the use of clean cargo handling equipment at ports.
NJ Transit said in July it will build an outdoor charging facility in Secaucus with a $99.5 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). The facility, with a price tag of $212 million over two phases, initially will have the capacity to serve 67 buses and include infrastructure for a later expansion to serve 63 more buses. The targeted project completion date is 2028.
In a separate project, the agency, which serves 925,000 bus passengers on 263 bus routes a day, in July hired a designer for a $92 million project to create a 100,000-square-foot facility in Union City that will handle 40 battery-powered buses. It is slated to open in 2030.
The two initiatives are part of NJ Transit’s effort to convert the agency’s entire fleet of 2,300 buses to zero-emission vehicles by 2040. However, the agency has to date put only eight electric buses serving routes.
NJ Transit CEO Kevin S. Corbett, announcing the design contract, said in a release that the “state-of-the-art facility will serve as a model for cost-effective, sustainable bus operations across New Jersey and represents another important step in advancing our Zero-Emission Bus Program.”
The agency said it intends to make the design “standardizable and cost effective so that similar facilities can be easily replicated across the state.”
NJ Transit’s announcement comes as the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) this month will collect the final data for a study of cargo handling equipment at the state’s ports and rail yards in an effort to reduce emissions.
The study of yard trucks and other goods-moving equipment used predominantly inside ports will assist the agency in enforcing new rules set to take effect in March. They require all cargo handling equipment newly introduced in state ports and rail yards to meet Tier 4 diesel engine standards, the strictest emissions requirement from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. By 2028, all existing port equipment must meet that standard.
Slow Uptake
Transportation accounts for 38% of New Jersey’s emissions, the state’s largest source, and medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDVs) generate a significant part of that pollution, especially in neighborhoods around ports that already are overburdened with a variety of polluting sources.
Yet the state has lagged in getting electric transit and school buses, and heavy-duty trucks on the road, according to environmental groups. They say the NJ Transit effort is underfunded and well below what is needed, and the effort to encourage electric truck adoption by installing plentiful charging infrastructure has yet to come to fruition.
About 4% of the on-road vehicles in New Jersey are MHDVs, but they contribute 25% of the state’s transportation greenhouse gases, according to a DEP report, “A Roadmap to Zero-Emission Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles in New Jersey,” released in May. The 3,737 transit buses in the state are responsible for 3% of the state HMDV greenhouse emissions, according to the report, which acknowledged the slow uptake of electric MHDVs in the state even as the number of light-duty EVs on state roads jumped 68% in 2023. (See NJ EV Incentives Target Low-income Buyers.)
“While (MHDV) ZEVs are beginning to see increased market share in New Jersey, registrations remain low,” the report concluded.
With 512,500 MHDVs in the state, there were just 2,324 electric MHDVs registered in the state and no MHDVs powered by fuel cell technology, the second category studied in the DEP’s report.
The state has a solid portfolio of state programs to get more zero-emission HMDVs on the road, the report says. They include truck-purchase incentive programs using funds from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the state’s Volkswagen Mitigation fund and an incentive program to help replace diesel buses used in school districts with electric vehicles.
The state in 2021 adopted California’s Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) regulations, which require manufacturers to make an increasing number of electric MHDV sales in the state. And the DEP also is trying to prepare truck fleet owners and operators for the transition to electric vehicles with a new program called New Jersey Fleet Advisor. The agency on Aug. 15 closed the initial phase of the application process for fleets of fewer than 10 MHDVs, which, if successful, will receive a roadmap to electrification created by CALSTART, a national nonprofit organization working to decarbonize the transportation industry.
Low Priority
Yet additional strategies are needed, the DEP report states. It suggests new programs to map the additional charging demand from MHDV electrification, fund new charging technologies and establish a workforce development program to create trained technicians well-versed in the new technology.
Pam Frank, CEO of ChargEVC-NJ, a nonprofit coalition that promotes the sustainable growth of the EV market, said the state is behind in getting MHDVs on the road. She cited the lack of progress of a straw proposal to set out the rules and incentives for getting charging infrastructure to serve MHDVs installed around the state. Initially released in 2021, the Board of Public Utilities released a revised version in December 2022.
“We have been sitting in limbo, and this is of their own making,” said Frank. “This is supposed to be a high priority of this administration, and we’re nowhere.”
BPU spokesman Bailey Lawrence, asked about what is happening with the proposal, said “the next step would be board action on the issue.”
Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter, said the NJ Transit electrification projects are a step forward, but the agency is “definitely not moving fast enough, definitely needs to be prioritized.”
“By transitioning into electric buses, you’re going to have more efficiency,” she said. “Prioritizing public transit, the electrification of public transit is not just a benefit in the economic sense for the state and NJ Transit, it’s also an action on public health.”
William Beren, chairman of the NJ Sierra Club’s transportation committee, said a key problem is that the state relies on federal money to fund NJ Transit’s electrification program. And so far, that has not come close to the estimated $200 million a year in capital investment the agency estimates is needed, he said.
Clean Port Equipment
The MHDV emissions at New Jersey’s ports — most notably the Port of New York and New Jersey — have come under scrutiny, in large part due to their proximity to low-income and overburdened communities.
The DEP initiative to electrify cargo handling equipment follows similar rules from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2022 that require all material handling equipment added after Jan. 1, 2022, to the port to be of Tier 4 emissions standards. As of January 2025, any new terminal tractor added to the port fleet must be a zero-emission vehicle.
The authority says the strategy is working. The restrictions, and related data collection requirements that have helped compile information on the port fleet, have enabled the authority to already meet a 2026 target that all ship-to-shore and rail-mounted gantry cranes be zero-emission equipment, authority spokesman Steven Burns said.
“We’ve seen more zero-emission equipment get introduced at the port, alongside an overall growing interest in alternative fuels and zero-emission technology,” he said.
There are now 190 electric cargo handling equipment vehicles in the port. But the port has yet to make inroads into the 28,800 drayage trucks — trucks that bring containers in and out of the port — that are registered with the authority. In June, only two electric Class 8 heavy-duty vehicles performed drayage duties at the port, along with another nine electric trucks of other types that work there, Burns said.
Authority officials hope those figures will swell when the first two truck EV chargers come online at the port in January.