In 2011, the tiny city of Seneca, South Carolina, was about to be a national pioneer.
That was the year the city landed a $4.1 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration to fund what would be the first all-electric bus fleet in the United States.
The service began in 2015, and one of its most frequent riders was its biggest early champion, Seneca Mayor Dan Alexander.
On Tuesday, however, the City Council, staring down the amount of money it would take to repair and operate the EV bus fleet, decided that it could not afford to keep operating the Catbus transit system. The fleet will cease operations within 60 days.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman W.C. Honeycutt Jr. said that the council “fought hard” during its executive session to find a way to save the bus service. In a phone interview Wednesday, Honeycutt said the city tried to work with the United Way of Oconee County and Prisma Health Oconee Memorial Hospital, among other agencies, to see if Seneca could continue offering the free service.
“It just didn’t come together,” Honeycutt said. “We can’t even start from scratch.”
The reason is because the city is facing potential millions of dollars to entirely revamp the EV fleet, which Councilman Ernest Riley said during Tuesday’s meeting, Seneca does not have.
Honeycutt said that Seneca has been reeling from a series of costly problems since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020, including a tornado that struck the city on Easter Sunday that year and killed a local security worker.
Seneca is “still waiting for [FEMA] to cut the check” for that disaster, Honeycutt said.
The final blow to the bus fleet came when Proterra, the Greer-based maker of the electric vehicle batteries, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. City fleets using Proterra’s technology were left pondering their futures all across the United States and Canada. In Seneca, the city was left to pay for repairs and upkeep as an offshoot of the filing, as Proterra would no longer be doing the maintenance.
Honeycutt said hundreds of Seneca residents came to rely on the bus for getting to work and shopping in town.
Proterra’s other flagship client in the state is Rock Hill, which began the country’s first all-electric fleet to be built from no service (Seneca modified an existing bus fleet) in 2019. Rock Hill offers a free bus system that serves workers, shoppers, and medical clients around the city’s main business areas.
In a text, a city spokesperson said that the Proterra bankruptcy “has caused us some issues with fleet maintenance, but so far the impacts to service have been manageable.”
