Sheffield City Council has announced plans to spend £93m on 180 new electric powered buses.
The new fleet of buses was announced on March 15th by the transport secretary Councillor Tom Hunt in a video posted on the Sheffield City Council’s page.
The costs of the vehicles will be split with the government spending £33.4m, £58.3m coming from South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) and a further £26m will be spent by the SYMCA to upgrade infrastructure and prepare Olive Grove bus depot for the new arrivals.
Councillor Hunt said: “Today’s announcement is fantastic news for Sheffield. 33 million pounds of investment coming into the city to allow us to purchase zero emission clean buses. That means better journeys for passengers, less pollution and cleaner air for us all to breathe.
“We’ve done a lot of work in the city over the last few years to drive down air pollution. This will allow us to go further by getting old dirty, polluting diesel buses off our streets quicker and replacing them with clean electric buses”.
On February 10th 2025, a similar initiative was launched in Chesterfield; 57 single and double decker Stagecoach buses replaced over two thirds of the towns old diesel buses, saving over 102,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year at a price of £31m, and one year on, the buses have received a lot of praise, with Chesterfield resident James Roddis calling them the: “Best buses we’ve had.”
Sheffield residents however, are taking to the proposal with less enthusiasm on facebook, as the original video posted was met with many critical comments. One such comment by Angela Bates joking that hovercrafts would be needed due to Sheffield’s ongoing pothole problem.
Another commenter, Gareth Ede said: “Will it make the buses more reliable and actually run in time”, this was responded to by Sheffield City Council who said: “Good morning Gareth, the introduction pf the electric buses will make taking the bus a more attractive option to move around the city. the buses are clean, quiet and the improvements we are making to the public transport network across the city will help make them more reliable.”
