IF you regularly use the Monks Cross P&R service to get into town, you might be in for a bit of a treat some time in the next few days.

York has taken delivery of its first fully-electric double decker bus. And it and two others like it will come into operation over the next month.

According to Marc Bichtemann, of Park & Ride operators First, it is “another milestone ... in what is already a thriving Park & Ride scheme in York.”

It is certainly good news. If you’ve ever been walking through the city centre and got stuck behind a diesel bus as it pulls away from the kerb, you’ll know all about the foul fumes such buses belch out.

The air quality in certain parts of York, especially at rush hour, is dreadful. So the more electric buses we have on the streets the better.

It is, however, a pity that the city council wasn’t able to insist that all Park & Ride services should be electric. That was what it originally wanted when it put the eight-year Park & Ride contract out to tender in 2016. Unfortunately, not a single bus operator was prepared to tender on that basis.

First, which had operated Park & Ride in York for more than 20 years, and which introduced the city’s first single-decker electric buses on Park & Ride routes in 2014, claimed the service couldn’t be run on a ‘commercially sustainable basis’ if all the buses had to be electric. The council was forced to tender again, having accepted that electric buses would operate on only two Park & Ride routes.

But at least that is a start. We trust the new double deckers will be a success and that as the the cost of electric technology comes down over the years ahead, we will see more and more buses like this replacing polluting diesels on the city’s streets.