Duval County Public Schools unveiled 36 new electric school buses Thursday that students will begin riding when the new school year starts.<\/p>\n
The new electric fleet was funded through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s Clean School Bus Program. Durham School Services will operate 26 of the buses, while Student Transportation of America will operate 10.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n District leaders said the buses will serve students on Jacksonville\u2019s Northside, Downtown, the Beaches and in Arlington.<\/p>\n School officials said the electric buses are quieter than traditional diesel buses, produce no diesel exhaust emissions and are expected to have lower long-term maintenance costs.<\/p>\n \u201cThese school buses will emit no diesel exhaust particles into the air,\u201d a representative from JEA said during Thursday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n Highland Electric Fleets said cleaner air could improve children\u2019s health. Chris Orlando, the company\u2019s director of communications, said replacing just five diesel school buses with electric buses could reduce pediatric asthma risk for about 1,500 students.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll cost less to own and maintain than their diesel counterparts,\u201d Orlando said.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n District leaders said drivers have completed specialized training to safely operate the new buses before students return to class this fall<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duval County Public Schools unveiled 36 new electric school buses Thursday that students will begin riding when the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,14324,146205,146206,639,146207,969,116,118,117,74833,634,83914,146204,74734],"class_list":["post-358451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-arlington","tag-clean_school_bus_program","tag-durham_school","tag-duval_county","tag-electric_fleet","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jonah_gavvino","tag-local","tag-student_transportation_of_america","tag-us_environmental_protection_agency","tag-yona_gavino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}