Free Republic

City health officials say nearby residents should stay indoors as much as possible, wear a mask outside, avoid strenuous physical activity and close windows and doors. Decommissioned buses were burned during a fire at the SEPTA Midvale Depot in North Philadelphia on June 5, 2025. (Emma Lee/WHYY) From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know! A fast-moving fire erupted early Thursday at a transit bus lot in Philadelphia filled with dozens of decommissioned vehicles, sending a thick plume of black smoke into the sky but causing...

BREAKING: 3 buses just exploded in a town near Tel Aviv. The buses were empty. It seems like the bombs exploded prematurely. https://x.com/i/status/1892665756187312493

There is considerable buzz in Washington about the disclosures of Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin on controversial grants by the Biden Administration, including the $50 million environmental justice grant to an organization that believes “climate justice travels through a Free Palestine.” However, one item was particularly notable: $160 million to a Canadian electric bus manufacturer which later announced bankruptcy without fulfilling the contract. Both the Obama and Biden Administration wasted billions in loans and grants on green initiatives including the failed solar-panel company Solyndra and most recently the termination of the Ivanpah Solar Power Plant. These...

Joe Biden tried to bankroll the use of electric school buses at government schools across the country. But as the electric buses continue to have massive reliability issues, some schools regret taking the federal handouts and now want help from the Environmental Protection Agency to get themselves out of the program. ... There are at least six districts reporting massive problems with Lion Electric school buses they bought through the federal program. ... The two electric buses received by Yarmouth Schools have been with the district for a year and a half, but they have only been used a few...

Austin, Texas, planned to transition all its city buses to electric, but the ambitious climate-friendly goal has come to a screeching halt. The Austin Monitor reports that 46 new electric buses – costing around $1 million each – will be in storage for at least a year due to lack of charging infrastructure to keep them running all day. The buses were manufactured by now-bankrupt Proterra, which has left city transit districts across the country with fleets of inoperable buses. Proterra was acquired by Phoenix Motor Inc., which the Monitor reports is struggling to service warranties and repair technical issues....

A state court judge ruled that New York City cannot block Texas from sending buses with migrants, who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, to the Big Apple. Judge Mary Rosado said in a ruling on Thursday the law New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) sought to use to curb the flow of migrant buses into the city is unconstitutional, The Associated Press (AP) reported. Rosado said it “violates a fundamental right — the right to travel,” and that states cannot police interstate travel of passengers solely on their socioeconomic background, according to AP. She said the city should set...

New York City can't use an unconstitutional, two-century-old “anti-pauper” law to block the state of Texas from offering migrants free bus rides to the city from the southern border, a state judge has ruled. The court on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Mayor Eric Adams in January against charter bus companies contracted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. It sought to bar them from knowingly dropping off “needy persons,” citing an 1817 state law that criminalized bringing an indigent person into the state “for the purpose of making him a public charge.” Justice Mary Rosado said in a sternly worded...

Kamala Harris on Wednesday held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with two months until Election Day. Harris had to bus in supporters… AGAIN. At least a dozen yellow buses full of people from Massachusetts arrived at Harris’s New Hampshire rally.

Parents in a Boston exurb have reacted angrily to revelations that schools are axing buses for local children — but keeping them running for the kids of migrants and asylum seekers. Some 150 students at Stoughton Public Schools are scrambling to find ways to get to school from September 4, after the district cut services due to a lack of funding. Controversially, the hundreds of migrant and asylum seeker families living in the town of Stoughton will still get school-buses, thanks to funding from the state. The scrapping of buses for local kids comes amid fears that Massachusetts is going...

Affluent liberals will do nearly anything to parade their own perceived moral virtue, including fleecing their neighbors at gunpoint. In the end, however, the only thing on parade is tragicomic liberalism. On July 25, Megan Davey Limarzi, Inspector General of Montgomery County, Maryland, issued a blistering memorandum regarding her office’s (OIG) investigation into Montgomery County Public Schools’ catastrophic management of an electric bus contract, which has cost taxpayers millions and forced MCPS to rely on diesel buses. The sad story began with the usual virtue signaling. “On February 23, 2021, as part of its commitment to sustainability, MCPS announced it...

The Biden administration has begun a crackdown on emissions generated by heavy duty diesel trucks and buses with regulations announced Friday aimed at forcing those vehicles to hit zero pollution targets by the end of the decade. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims the new rules represent the “strongest-ever greenhouse gas emissions” standards of their kind with everything from city buses and box trucks to garbage trucks and 18-wheelers targeted.

To RTD, the crimes that are happening are a microcosm of a larger, societal challenge that is seeping its way into its buses, trains and stations.. The Lakewood Police Department described a disturbing scene that unfolded on Feb. 13 at a Regional Transportation District light rail station. Two teenage girls allegedly assaulted a man at the Wadsworth Boulevard light rail station, the police said. The teens seemingly attacked the man at random, holding him down, kicking him and calling him racial slurs, the police added. The incident was one of several crimes that occurred in metro Denver's public transportation system...

Schools in one South Carolina district are getting a technological and environmental boost with the delivery of a new fleet of electric school buses. The Orangeburg County School District on Monday was part of a celebration about the delivery of 20 new electric school buses. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan was on had at Marshall Elementary School, in Orangeburg, along with South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn and district officials to announce the funding for the new clean school buses delivered to the state. Officials said South Carolina received $65.9 million for 168 new school buses from President...

Porterville Unified school buses are getting quieter. That's because they're slowly shifting away from diesel and moving to electric. Assistant superintendent Brad Rohrbach says that transition is now accelerating thanks to a $13.8 million award from the Environmental Protection Agency's 'Clean School Bus Program'. "It's really the next step in our endeavor to sustain and move forward on our sustainability and energy efforts at the district," Rohrbach said. Director of Transportation and Sustainability Richard Tree says the 35 electric buses they will purchase with the money will help reduce the district's carbon footprint and create a model for others in...

Cities coast-to-coast grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed .. Between the federal government, states and municipalities, untold billions in taxpayer dollars have been spent adding electric buses to transit fleets across the U.S. in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. However, cities from coast-to-coast are grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed, are too expensive to fix, or they have scrapped their electric fleets altogether. Officials in Asheville, North Carolina, recently expressed frustration that three of the five e-buses the city purchased for millions in 2018 are now sitting idle due to a combination of software issues,...

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The city of Asheville's purchase of five electric buses in 2018 has turned into a multi-million-dollar loss. The buses have been broken or unable to run because of software and/or mechanical issues, making them an expensive and disappointing purchase, according to city maintenance and transportation staff. ... Currently, three of the five buses are idled, with one that has had a broken double door since July. “We haven’t been able to get new doors,” Asheville's interim transportation director Jessica Morriss said. “There's no third party that makes a door. We'd have to get custom-made doors.” Each of...

An electric double-decker bus caught fire in southwest London on Thursday, prompting the city’s transportation agency to remove a fleet from service as a precaution while the incident is investigated, according to reports. Passengers on the bus in Wimbledon during rush hour had to be evacuated, but no injuries were reported, according to BBC News. Video of the incident show flames and smoke engulfing an apparent rear section of the bus. "Safety is our top priority and we are working with the operator, London General, and the bus manufacturer, Switch, to investigate what happened," Transport for London’s head of business...

Officials today launched an investigation after one of Sadiq Khan's electric buses exploded during today's rush hour. Terrified residents in Wimbledon described a massive 'bang' after a double decker burst into flames during this morning's commute, sparking chaos on the roads as black smoke filled the streets. Astonishing video obtained by MailOnline shows the dramatic moment firefighters battled to put out the inferno. Transport for London (TfL) today launched an investigation after the blaze destroyed the rear and blew out the back windows ... 'It took a long time for them to get it under control with flames flying out...

Electric buses are just like electric passenger vehicles: they’re not ready for prime time, only more so. Proterra buses are a case in point. Cities that wasted money on them found they had far less range then advertised. They commonly couldn’t complete even short, flat routes specifically designed for them. The enormous weight of their batteries cracked frames, and getting parts from the factory was virtually impossible. But to make up for their failures, they were far more expensive than reliable diesel buses. Proterra went bankrupt in August of 2023.President Biden gave Proterra at least $10 million, and lauded it...

Chicago suburbs pass their own ordinances Lawmakers in Chicago suburbs in recent days have approved new laws similar to the busing ordinance in the nation’s third-most-populous city that aims to streamline migrant drop-offs and stop buses from leaving new arrivals “in the middle of traffic, on random street corners and at O’Hare International Airport,” Chicago officials have said. Texas has sent over 28,000 asylum-seekers to Chicago since August 2022, according to Friday numbers from Abbott’s office. “This was a tough one, because we don’t want to look like we don’t care, but we have to move forward and get a...