YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Almost every morning, Dean Harris observes the same Tesla pulling into the Western Reserve Transit Authority’s parking lot and glide into a space served by one of six public electric vehicle charging ports at its main hub in Youngstown.
The driver plugs in, leaves for the workday at Youngstown State University, and returns in the afternoon with his vehicle fully charged and ready to roll again.
“The Tesla is charging as we speak,” Harris, WRTA executive director, says on a crisp Wednesday morning in October.
Approximately two years ago, the transit authority hub in Youngstown was among the first in the city to install EV charging stations. At the time, there were few places across the Mahoning Valley where EV motorists could recharge their batteries and resume their journeys.
That gap has since narrowed considerably.
Range Anxiety
In March 2022, the electric-vehicle app Plugshare.com showed there were just 17 charging locations for EV drivers throughout Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties. Of those stations, three were identified as “fast” chargers, in which vehicle batteries could be charged more rapidly than traditional Level 2 chargers.
Two years later, the same app tells a completely different story.
Accessed through a smartphone – some EVs have similar technology embedded in their dashboards – apps such as Plugshare display maps that pin locations showing the motorist’s position and the whereabouts of charging stations in the area. Today, data show that there are at least 63 locations across the three-county area – many with multiple units – that are active or will be activated soon. Of those 63 spots, 22 are designated as “fast” chargers.
“Over the last 12 months, the terrain has changed in terms of EV charging stations,” says Eric Jay, vice president of University Electric, Youngstown.
University Electric recently completed a project for the city where it installed four new Level 2 charging stations. Two are located at a landscaped parking lot at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, replete with tutorial kiosks displaying a graphic on how to use the chargers. Two others were placed in the city’s water department parking lot along Federal Street, where the Kress building once stood.
Jay says the company has completed three installations – two for the city and another for a private customer. “We do seem to be getting more requests for these kinds of opportunities,” he says. “We’re hoping to get more once state and federal funds loosen up,” he says.
Among the projects University Electric has bid is another station planned at WRTA’s Mahoning Avenue location, Jay says. This would include the installation of fast charging stations for a future bus barn at the site used specifically for large electric buses and transport vehicles.
Public Transportation
Two years ago, WRTA’S Harris says, the transit authority received $30,000 in grant money from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. It put up another $37,000 of its own funds and installed three EV charging stations – each with two charging ports – at its main bus garage along Mahoning Avenue. Two of the systems are inside Gate C, while the third station is accessible through Gate A.
Harris says the downside of these chargers is that they are Level 2 units. As such, they require between four and 10 hours of charge time before the EV reaches 80% capacity, depending on the size and range of the battery. The upside is that these units are open to the public at no charge.
“Average charging time is about four hours,” he says of its units. Last year, WRTA EV ports accommodated a total of 284 charging sessions. The units are available to the public from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Harris says the transit authority has an EV fast charger crated in one of its garages but has yet to be installed. This charger, he clarifies, would be used to power WRTA’s smaller, new electric buses, one of them an autonomous vehicle that would serve a route along Fifth Avenue to Mercy Health Youngstown Hospital on Belmont Avenue. It is scheduled for launch in November.
The bus barn project is a separate venture, Harris says.
Still, his goal over the next five years is to expand the parking lot on land next to Gate A and add a DC Fast charger for public use. “There’s still not a lot of options for fast charging in our area,” he says.
Infrastructure on the Move
According to Plugshare, most of the EV charging units in Mahoning County are clustered in Youngstown, Austintown, and Boardman, data show.
Aside from the downtown lots and WRTA, the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County has installed two Level 2 public chargers in its lot.
In Boardman, most of the EV stations are found at venues such as Southern Park Mall and the string of car dealerships in the township.
The map shows planned fast chargers for a Sheetz station in North Jackson and a Pilot Flying J station in North Lima.
In all, 39 stations are identified as either in operation or planned for spots in Mahoning County.
In Trumbull County, some 14 EV charging stations are either in use or planned are pinpointed. The Sheetz station, near Girard, has a slate of six fast charging units able to charge a total of 12 vehicles. Columbiana County boasts 10 stations active or in progress, data show.
“It’s incrementally growing,” says Cody Hilliard, business manager at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 64 in Boardman. “We have a lot of contractors who have been putting them in.”
He estimates approximately a dozen of the union’s signatory contractors are regularly active installing either public charging stations or units for residential purposes.
Two years ago, Local 64 installed a charger of its own in its front parking lot, Hilliard says. “Our apprentices installed it as a project for their class,” he says. “We bought the material, and they were trained to install it. There was a bit of a learning curve.” The course has since been added to the training curriculum.
“We’ll definitely see an increase in qualified people to install these,” Hilliard says.
Federal money released to Ohio through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program, stands to help EV charging development along major thoroughfares in the Valley, according to the program’s infrastructure deployment plan for fiscal 2025.
Ohio is earmarked to receive $140 million over a five-year period – starting in 2022 – to invest in EV charging construction across the state.
The latest round of funding shows two new locations are planned in Mahoning County.
One is a $742,987 allocation to develop a charging station at Tiffany Plaza in Boardman.
Another secures $746,136 at a recently built Sheetz station near the Interstate 76 and North Bailey Road interchange in North Jackson.
“There’s been an uptick in installations at service plazas and turnpike stops,” Hilliard says.
Overall sales for EVs have not met the demand initially envisioned by the major automakers, evidenced by giants such as General Motors tempering their EV production goals. Nevertheless, sales of plug-in hybrids that require charging stations are gaining traction.
“You’ve seen the most increase during the last year,” Hilliard says of EV charging installations. “There’s a lot of movement to get infrastructure built and technology is ever changing. I would be very curious to see what the tech looks like in five or 10 years.”
Pictured at top: Dean Harris, executive director of WRTA, and Phil DeMarco, safety security manager, charge up a WRTA-owned Tesla EV.