The Kane County Commission held a ribbon cutting ceremony in conjunction with Utah Clean Cities for the kickoff of the East Zion Initiative. Tammy Bostic, Executive Director of Utah Clean Cities, spoke about the mission of the Utah Clean Cities Coalition, which is to advance the energy, economic and environmental security of the United States by supporting local decisions to adopt practices that reduce the use of petroleum in the transportation sector.
The project, titled EVZion, will pilot and demonstrate the feasibility of zero-emission electric shuttles in Zion National Park. EVZion will demonstrate a small-scale environmentally sound, zero-emission, electric vehicle (EV) shuttle system through the east entrance of Zion National Park (ZNP).
The project has been designed for universal scalability, with deployment in other high-traffic, environmentally sensitive National and State Parks throughout the United States.
Kane County Commissioner Brent Chamberlain said, “The plan is to have the first shuttle ready to go by October, 2021. The Kanab Center’s current chargers will provide the charging center for the first bus. This first EV bus will act as a pilot for the whole program. It will be based in Kanab and will shuttle to Zion and other parks. The goal is to eventually have Kanab be the hub for a regional transportation authority to shuttle visitors to all the parks and tourist attractions around Kane County.”
The next steps involved are testing the EV shuttle bus and obtaining state and federal funding to grow the EV network.
