SAN ANTONIO -- Members of the Bexar County delegation in Washington, D.C., announced Monday that VIA Metropolitan Transit has been awarded $5 million in stimulus funds to replace conventional diesel buses.

The funds were awarded as part of the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. VIA’s project was one of 43 winning proposals and the only one in Texas to receive funding.

“With the TIGGER grant funding, we will be able to replace three of our diesel-powered buses with new buses that are powered solely by rechargeable batteries,” VIA President and CEO Keith T. Parker said in a news release. “Because these buses have zero emissions, they offer the cleanest operating technology from the source to the road of any buses we know of anywhere in the world.”

The new buses will be used in the downtown area of San Antonio and the batteries will be charged at the VIA station at the Alamodome using either solar panels that will be installed or wind energy from a wind farm in West Texas. As a result, the buses will produce no emissions.

The buses are expected to be in operation by the summer of 2010, said VIA spokeswoman Priscilla Engle.