according to the U.S. Forest Service<\/strong><\/a>. In the summertime, most of the tourists off the cruise ships take a tour bus to get there. It takes approximately 20-30 minues to get there from downtown and back.<\/p>\nDuring the smooth, quiet ride through the Mendenhall Valley, McDonnell emphasized the need for collaboration between tour companies and the City and Borough of Juneau to bring an electric bus to Juneau permanently.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy working together, not thinking competitively, with the city of Juneau and other tour companies, we want to find a way to make it financially feasible to have electric buses. We need to find like-minded businesses that can work together to facilitate the cost,\u201d he said to the 20 people aboard the bus. Some of the guests were other tour company owners, city leaders and elected state government officials, such as Rep. Sam Kito, D-Juneau.<\/p>\n
The cost of an electric bus is high \u2014 really high. The bus in which everybody rode to the glacier costs $750,000.<\/p>\n
According to BYD Sales Manager Justin Scalzi, that\u2019s as cheap as they come. Other buses, comparable in size to many of those used by many of Juneau\u2019s tour companies, cost about $850,000, he said.<\/p>\n
Scalzi rode on the tour Tuesday. On the same day, he pitched the idea of the bus to the Juneau Economic Development Council. He did so two months ago, too.<\/p>\n
$750,000 is far more than the average amount local tour companies, such as Alaska Coach Tours, typically spend on buses. McDonnell said they usually buy buses used for $30,000 to $50,000.<\/p>\n
But he isn\u2019t letting the high cost deter his efforts of making the tourism industry in Juneau more envionmentally friendly. He suggested setting up a rotation schedule or some other means of sharing the bus that tour companies, such as Gastineau Guiding and Allen Marine, could use if they decided to share the cost of an electric bus.<\/p>\n
That idea resonated with Assembly member Kate Troll and Juneau Hydropower Managing Director Duff Mitchell, both whom were a part of Tuesday\u2019s tour. After the tour, Troll and Mitchell both pitched a park-and-ride idea, which would enable the city to potentially help shoulder the cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese buses are representative of a well-entrenched community value,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cNow it\u2019s just a matter of sitting down with people and working it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Troll suggested that in the off-season when the tourists are gone, the city could loan the bus from the tour companies and use it in a park-and-ride program, which the city is already looking into, she said. It could transport people from a parking lot, such as the Mendenhall Mall, to downtown.<\/p>\n
Although she doesn\u2019t think the city has enough money in its coffers to help with the initial purchase of an electric tour bus, Troll said she is excited by the idea. For a number of years, she worked as a tour guide.<\/p>\n
She said that she would lead tours to the glacier and tell tourists about how much it was receding only to load them onto a \u201cdiesel-burning bus\u201d shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe irony never quite escaped me,\u201d she said. \u201cThis finally connects the glacier, which is a symbol of climate change, with the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bus will run two more tours, that are open to the public, today. Tickets cost $25 each, and the proceeds will go to Adventure Green, a tourism sustainability program. The first tour will depart from Centennial Hall at 2:45 p.m. The second will depart an hour later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A group of about 20 people took a short tour to the Mendenhall Glacier Tuesday morning. The tour was considerably different than most: The tour bus \u2014 not the glacier \u2014 was the center of attention. It was the first glacier tour ever to be run on an electric bus, and it was the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":5250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5249"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}