Joel Gardner is not going to miss a chance to apply for money that could help northwest Arkansas.
Gardner is the executive director of Ozark Regional Transit, the region’s public transportation provider. Through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the U.S. Department of Transportation has a $2.5 billion Charging & Fueling Infrastructure grant program to build electric vehicle charging stations, and it sought applications from transit organizations.
Gardner conferred with his board of directors and decided to apply for a $14.9 million CFI Community Program grant. Any chance to get federal money for his region is a worthy effort, he said.
“I will do that every opportunity I get,” Gardner said. “If I see something that I am qualified to apply for and it’s going to benefit the area, I’ll take it.”
ORT wasn’t chosen for the first round of funds, but Gardner was told the organization was “highly recommended” for the second round of funding. That turned out to be true. ORT received notification Aug. 22 from U.S. Sen. John Boozman’s office that it would receive the grant.
Gardner said Boozman and U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, both of whom voted against the infrastructure law, were instrumental in pushing ORT’s application through.
“The crazy thing about this is, I keep my board up to speed on everything I make applications for: yes, no, maybe so, that type of thing,” Gardner said. “At 10 a.m. Thursday morning, I told my board. ‘This is still out there. We haven’t heard anything on it.’
“I got the notice by noon, and I was like, ‘Holy crap, that’s cool.’”
Gardner said he thought ORT could capitalize on the community segment of the funding because most applications were for corridor grants — charging stations for tractor-trailers along interstate highways. Gardner instead applied for money to build 17 charging stations in four cities in northwest Arkansas that will be open for public use.
The exact locations aren’t set in stone, Gardner said, but five are scheduled to be in Fayetteville and Rogers, four in Bentonville and three in Springdale. The stations would have at least 92 charging ports, divided equally between quick and slow chargers, that would increase the region’s charging capacity by 58%.
Gardner said he wanted the stations to be along ORT bus routes, of course, but also in places that the public goes — shopping centers, community parks, grocery stores.
“Not everybody wants to go to Walmart to charge,” Gardner said. “They want to go other places and do other things and charge while they are at those locations.
“The list is flexible. One of the common thought processes we had was, where do people go?”
The chargers will be suitable for cars and vans, not buses or big rigs, Gardner said. ORT has electric vans for its on-demand transportation and expects to have some for its regular routes within a couple of years.
Gardner said current technology allows a public transit van to drive 110 miles on a single charge, about half of what ORT requires on a daily regular route. A direct-current fast charger is capable of fully charging a battery in 30 minutes, so an ORT driver could charge the van for the second half of his or her route while breaking for lunch, Gardner said.
The real work now begins, but Gardner hopes to have the infrastructure up and operational in two years. Whichever company wins the construction bid is responsible for maintaining each site for five years, and some of the sites will need improvements before stations can be installed.
“There is a lot of work that goes into having these things done,” Gardner said. “It is also going to be an improved bus stop along the fixed routes. Each area is going to be engineered and designed independently. There’s not a cookie cutter on this.”
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