While school children delight in singing the lyrics, “the wheels on the bus go ”˜round and ”˜round,” a company that specializes in making sure there are school bus wheels to turn is planning a move from Elmsford to a location in Yorktown that offers more space.
Bird Bus Sales & Service, which currently operates a facility on Warehouse Lane in Elmsford, has applied to the Town of Yorktown for site plan approval and a special use permit that would allow it to move to 3805 Crompond Road in Yorktown.
“We”™re the largest distributor of school buses on Long Island, New York City and Westchester,” Robert Reichenbach, vice president of Bird Bus Sales & Service, told the Business Journal. “We have a facility in Plainview, New York, and have the current facility in Elmsford.
“We are looking to move out of Elmsford into the Yorktown area,” he continued, ‘because we realize we”™re going to need a little bit more space and we do want to own the piece of property and provide back to the community. We do service all of the operators, all of the school districts, in Westchester County.”
The proposed site covers 2.74 acres and is east of the intersection of Crompond Road and Garden Lane. There are two parcels measuring 1.71 and 1.03 acres. The first includes buildings where the automobile dealership Taconic Kia operated, while the second had been used for vehicle storage.
There are two buildings at the 1.71-acre site, a 7,500-square-foot one-story stucco building that was used as the car dealer showroom and offices, and a 7,600-square-foot masonry garage where vehicle servicing took place.
Bird Bus proposes putting a new facade in place on what had been the auto dealership and raising the roof of the garage building since the current height is inadequate for school buses.
It says there will not be the vehicle delivery truck activity as found with a car dealership, since school buses are driven to the dealership by the manufacturer rather than being trucked. Bird Bus says that only light servicing such as oil changes and preparation of vehicles for sale would take place in the garage area, and that no heavy service or body repair work will take place at the proposed facility.
“We distribute Blue Bird, Micro Bird and Collins school buses,” Reichenbach said. “We are the leader in electric school buses in New York state and one of the leaders on the East Coast as well. We operate similar to a car dealership but we are a business-to-business operation as opposed to a business-to-consumer operation.”
Reichenbach said that most of the company”™s sales activity occurs off-site and activity at the Crompond Road site would be limited.
“We perform a pre-inspection of the vehicle, making sure the vehicle is in working order and then the New York State Department of Transportation comes in and does a new in-service inspection on the vehicle before we deliver the vehicle,” Reichenbach said.
The Blue Bird vehicles are manufactured in Fort Valley, Georgia. Micro Bird buses are manufactured in Drummondville, Quebec, Canada, while Collins’ are manufactured in Hutchinson, Kansas.
Reichenbach said there are over 45,000 school buses on the road in New York state, with more than 10,000 school buses operating in New York City.
“Blue Bird is the leader in alternative-fuel school buses, with more than 30,000 on the road replacing traditional diesel-powered buses,” Reichenbach said. “School systems are really pushing for it. Within the coming years, by 2024, federal government restrictions will make it more costly to operate a diesel bus and the entire automotive industry is going to be moving to alternative fuels.”
Reichenbach said that Bird Bus currently is working with a Westchester school district to introduce electric buses in a program that would be supported by a state grant.
“I”˜m expecting 11 more electric buses to be brought into our Plainview, Long Island location sometime in late November or December. That would be the same type of vehicle we”™re working on for Westchester,” Reichenbach said.
Four Blue Bird electric buses went into service with the Suffolk Transportation Service of Bay Shore, serving the Bay Shore School District on Long Island. It was reported that the district”™s transportation director estimated the operating and maintenance costs for the electric buses would be around 17 cents per mile, compared with 75 cents per mile for a diesel bus. The electric buses can run for about 120 miles between charges.
The White Plains City School District introduced five electric buses manufactured by Lion Electric during the 2018-19 school year in a program developed by Con Edison, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and National Express.
Voters in the Bethlehem, New York, school district in May approved purchasing nine electric buses for approximately $163,000 each. Also approved was spending up to $200,000 for charging stations and other infrastructure.
