New WRI Dashboard Collecting Data on Electric School Buses

The World Resources Institute's (WRI) Electric School Bus Initiative has unveiled a new tool aimed at helping school districts, private contractors, and policymakers find data on electric school buses.

The Electric School Bus Data Dashboard contains the latest tracking and interactive data visualizations on electric school buses' location, adoption status, manufacturer, funding source and bus type, as well as the social, economic, and health conditions of the students the buses serve. It also explores the distribution of fuel types and school bus ages in the entire U.S. school bus fleet, at the national and state level.

How to Use the Dashboard

Click here to see the dashboard.

Here is some guidance to help you navigate the dashboard:

• To move between pages of the dashboard, click the yellow buttons along the bottom.  
• All the visualizations are interactive: Hover over a section of a chart or map to see a pop-up with more details. Filter using the drop-down boxes in the top right of many pages. You can also filter each page by clicking on a section of any visualization, then click that section again to reset the filter.  
• To filter data within a chart or map, click on any of the categories in the legend.
• Click here to view the dashboard full-screen in a new window.
• Zoom in on maps using the + and – buttons.

Where Does the Data Come From?

Data on the adoption of electric school buses, including their location, status (awarded, ordered, delivered or operating), manufacturer, funding source and type comes from the Electric School Bus Initiative's Dataset of Electric School Bus Adoption (Lazer and Freehafer 2023). An updated dataset is published every six months, while the data in this dashboard is updated every month, based on the Electric School Bus Initiative’s real-time tracking.

The technical note contains information about data sources, collection methods and limitations. This dataset is also the basis for our regularly updated article on "The State of Electric School Bus Adoption in the U.S."

Data on the social, economic, and demographic characteristics of school districts also comes from the Electric School Bus Initiative's Dataset of Electric School Bus Adoption, with underlying data from the U.S. Census, EJScreen, and CDC.

Data on the overall fleet of U.S. school buses — of any fuel type — comes from the Electric School Bus Initiative's Dataset of U.S. School Bus Fleets, which was compiled from state-level datasets. The technical note contains information about data sources, collection methods and limitations. There are no plans to update this dataset.

Data on the characteristics of electric school bus funding sources come from the Electric School Bus Initiative's "Clearinghouse: Electric School Bus Funding and Financing Opportunities." This resource is updated annually, most recently in April 2023.

Originally posted on School Bus Fleet