Hybrid bus anyone? The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has awarded Eau Claire Transit with a $880,000 grant to replace some of its buses with fancy-pants gas-electric Totally Sweet Buses Of The Future.

Awesome. WisDot had $20 million of grant money just a-burning a hole its pocket, and lucky us, we get a nice chunk of it for the new buses. The so called “State of Good Repair" program awarded eight grants across the state, divvying up the 20 mil. between Appleton, Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, and Waukesha.

Sorry Wausau. No PriusBus for you.

A supporter of Wisconsin hybrid bus programs, Senator Herb Kohl has added his endorsement,  saying “This new equipment will not only make transit safer and more reliable, but will also save money on fuel costs and reduce pollution.  ... Our current bus system is in need of repair and this funding will help update the transit systems across the state.”

We'd like to extent a great, big, giant, sustainable, "Hey, that's pretty cool. Nice work." to the people who applied for the grant and made it happen.

UPDATE: In case you are curious as to how much hybrid bus $880,000 gets you, it's about one and three-fifths. The grant money gets us 80% of the way to two hybrid buses, with the city putting up the rest of the money. Plans are to have two of them by 2013.