Author: Rohan Shailesh Modi, GIZ – Photos: ICLEI, Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative & Elias Miguel Fernandez

TUMI E-Bus Mission is aiming to inspire a network of 100 cities to accelerate the transition to e-buses in global south. So far 63 cities have signed the Letter of intent to join the Mission’s network city program. The network city program supports the cities with regional training programs, global knowledge webinars, local study tours and local/cross regional peer to peer exchange. The aim of these activities is to support the network cities with targeted knowledge exchange which would support the cities in advancing their public transport fleet electrification plans.

TUMI E-Bus Mission City Network

Few of the activities undertaken for Network cities include:

– Global knowledge webinar series, by World Resources Institute, access the list here

– City Dialogues & study tour, jointly organized by all the partners

– Global E-course: Digitalizing E-bus projects, by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH – access the details here

– Global Knowledge hub, by GIZ – access the details here

– Regional trainings, by UITP

– Electric bus procurement, planning and operations – access details here

– Diversity and Inclusion in Public Transport – access details here
Further to support the peer-to-peer exchange among the cities and encourage closer engagement with private and financing sector institutions, the mission embarked on TUMI tour from October 2022. The aim of the tour was to organize in person events across the three partner regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America. With different regional objectives these on tour events were organized with aim to facilitate the network cities with:

– Market Dialogue; encourage close dialogues between network cities & private sector

– Finance Dialogue; encourage close dialogues between network cities & financing institutes

– Full scale electrification road map development

– Peer to Peer learning; encourage exchange between cities

– Technical study trips; organize study trips to various e-bus project facilities
The tour kicked off with a regional level event in Dakar, Senegal last year (Oct 2022) and ended recently with a global city dialogue in Paris, France (21st – 24th March 2023). A total of seven events were organized with two events in Asia, one in Africa, three events in Latin America and one in Europe.

The TUMI E-Bus Mission tour map

After six successful events in the partner regions the TUMI tour arrived in Paris for the final Global city dialogue in March 2023. The final tour was led by the TUMI E-Bus Mission partner ICLEI. A total to seven cities namely Porto Algere, São José dos Campos, Cuenca, Quito, Medellín, Mérida and Puebla participated in the event.

The day one (21st March) focused on the topic of E-Bus Technology and Digitalization. The day focused to facilitate a discussion among participating cities on technology & digitization, to understand the barriers and opportunities they have in the adoption and operations of e-buses. Further, the cities got an opportunity to speak with three innovative solution providers where they discussed their specific technological needs. The solution providers were:

ebusplan GmbH, which presented potential solutions on topics like block planning & scheduling, charging management and evaluation of log data from operations. The presentation further elaborated on key questions for strategic system design of Battery electric bus projects.

IVU Traffic Technologies, elaborated on how they are co-operating with other industry partners to provide a comprehensive IT solution for e-bus project managers. Their comprehensive solution caters to different stages of e-bus projects like strategic planning, vehicle scheduling, charging phase planning, depot management and vehicle dispatch. The presentation further elaborated on the importance of forecasting energy demand for electric bus projects and what are the key influencing technical vehicle parameters and operational conditions that influence the energy consumption.

TWAICE, presented and discussed on how implementing battery analytics could support the cities in increasing the lifetime of E-buses and simultaneously reduce the project TCO. Further they answered following key questions in 3 break out sessions with the participant cities:

– pre-requisites for implementation of battery analytics

– how to maximize value from battery analytics?

– what should be the city’s requirements from operators to manage the E-bus projects?
The day ended with a presentation by GIZ on The Grand Challenge (GC) an aggregated E-bus procurement approach from India. The presentation elaborated on how 5 Indian cities rolled out e-buses with an aggregated E-bus procurement approach and how the country is now looking forward to procure around 50000 E-buses in the coming years under the National Electric Bus Programme (NEBP).

Days two & three (22nd – 23rd March) focused on networking and learning about the latest solutions at the Autonomy Mobility World Expo. The city representatives were facilitated with guided tour to around 20 relevant solution providers, by the terrific partnerships team of AUTONOMY co-led Carolina Cominotti & Franca Fellmann. Some of the booths visited by the delegation included 2Hire, Avere-France : Electric vehicles Agency, DOET, Flowbird Group, GEOTAB, ioki, Intelligent Transport, Fifteen – Augmented Bike Networks, MaaS Alliance, MICHELIN – Mobility Intelligence, EIT Urban Mobility, DEKRA, ChargePoint, etc.

Peer to peer exchanges & Private sector discussions. Photo: ICLEI

Further, on day three the AUTONOMY team facilitated a networking lunch for the TUMI E-Bus Mission network cities with the member cities of the POLIS Network. Finally the day day ended with a session ‘Powering E-bus fleets: Cities Discover Solutions to Transport Electrification’.  The session started with a key note speech by Rohan Shailesh Modi and was followed by an engaging panel discussion with delegates from Merida, Puebla, Porto Alegre, São José dos Campos, Medellin, Quito and Cuenca. The panel was moderated by Tu My Tran from ICLEI and discussed on several topics ranging from e-mobility plans, scaling up of e-bus projects, e-mobility infrastructure, challenges/opportunities the cities are dealing with and financing.

On the final day, the cities accompanied by another delegation from GIZ Albania, the city of Tirana, the city of Salvador and WRI Brasil visited the transport authority the Ile-De-France Mobilités office to understand the energy transition journey for their bus and coach fleets. The authority manages the public transport in the no. 1 employment area of Europe where around citizens take at least 9.5 mn trips/year. The cities actively engaged with the Île-de-France Mobilités team on a range of topics like:

– organization frameworks and role of different departments

– why the authority currently prefers Biomethane over Electric technology for buses? Sources of biomethane

– Non farebox revenues & the mobility tax in the city

– bundled tendering approach for zero emission buses

– modal share of public transport with a focused discussion around cycling and COVID related impacts

City Delegates – Panel Discussion, Photo: ICLEI

The day ended with the delegation visiting one of the E-bus depots of RATPgroup to explore real world operational challenges and approaches of e-bus project implemented by one of the biggest public transport operators in the Paris region. You can read about that visit in more detail here

Peer to Peer Exchange and Bus Depot visits. Photo credit: ICLEI