Alexandria, Virginia, is continuing to expand its transit bus electrification project with an in-route overhead electric charger that can recharge the city’s buses without returning to the bus depot, vendor ABM announced Thursday.
The announcement follows the Oct. 30, 2025, groundbreaking for a new facility that will include the necessary infrastructure for up to 24 overhead electric bus chargers, solar panel arrays and battery energy storage systems.
The overhead chargers are faster than current plug-in chargers, according to DASH, which is the brand name for the Alexandria Transit Company, a nonprofit corporation wholly owned by the city of Alexandria.
The in-route changer will help extend each bus’s operational range, reduce downtime and lower greenhouse gas emissions, ABM said.
Alexandria began planning to electrify its bus fleet in 2019 and received funding that year for an initial six buses, which went into service two years later. As of November, DASH had 16 battery electric buses in service, with another 20 funded for procurement. It plans to add 27 new electric buses in future years, according to the most recent update to the Alexandria Transit Strategic Plan.
The DASH bus system has been fare-free since September 2021. In fiscal year 2024, it carried 5.3 million riders, an all-time high, according to ALXnow.
