In 2025, REACH partnered with Ameren Illinois to support the completion of 80 Community Transportation Electrification Plans across their service territory, helping communities advance transportation electrification — whether they already had defined goals or were just beginning to identify priorities and opportunities for action.
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in most U.S. states, and for many communities, the transition to EVs is both an opportunity and a challenge. The question isn’t whether change is coming. It’s how communities can plan for it in a way that is feasible, equitable, and actionable. And that planning often identifies barriers, such as limited or uneven awareness of EVs and the benefits of electrification, community infrastructure limitations, funding complexities, and a lack of thorough coordination among local partners.
That’s where this work began.
Through this work, REACH helped Ameren Illinois communities strengthen local planning capacity, build workforce readiness, and prepare to attract investment, while supporting the implementation of real projects on the ground.
Across these communities, this planning translated into tangible next steps for efforts such as:
- Identifying priority charging locations based on community needs and site readiness
- Evaluating electrical capacity and site considerations for proposed charging locations
- Connecting communities with funding pathways, incentive programs, and utility resources
- Providing education on EV benefits and operating considerations for communities to explore fleet assessments and evaluate electrification fit
- Strengthening local partnerships to support workforce readiness and long-term implementation
This statewide milestone demonstrated what’s possible when communities have access to strategic, practical planning support, and it created a strong foundation for sustained progress in transportation electrification across Illinois.
So, how did we accomplish this?
We followed a structured, community-centered planning process designed to produce customized transportation electrification plans for each community. At a high level, the process included:
- Developing a standardized planning framework, including an EV Blueprint, plan template, guided question set, and a defined work plan.
- Conducting outreach to key local stakeholders such as public works leaders, economic development teams, city managers, and mayors.
- Hosting multiple working sessions with each community to identify local goals, priorities, constraints, and opportunities.
- Translating stakeholder input and site analysis into a custom Transportation Electrification Plan for each community.
- Delivering and presenting each plan with a walkthrough of findings, mapped opportunities, and recommended focus areas.
- Conducting quarterly follow-ups to check progress, answer questions, and support continued momentum.
The scale and reach of this effort were significant. In total, 80 Community Transportation Electrification Plans were completed across the Ameren Illinois service territory, supporting a diverse mix of communities.
REACH facilitated hundreds of direct conversations with local leaders and staff, including more than 800 outreach calls, over 150 personalized emails, and a series of educational webinars.
Participation spanned southern Illinois, with particularly high engagement in counties such as McLean, Madison, St. Clair, and Champaign. This geographic spread reinforced that interest in transportation electrification planning is not limited to one community type — it is statewide.
Most importantly, in several communities, planning quickly translated into early on-the-ground progress. Examples include:
- The City of Herrin is adding an all-electric pickup truck to its municipal fleet
- The City of Marion is purchasing an electric shuttle van to support daily operations across City facilities
- The Village of Sauget is installing a public EV charging station and adding an electric police vehicle to its fleet
- The City of Aledo is installing multiple public Level 2 charging stations at City Hall, park facilities, and the local library parking areas
Transportation electrification is a long-term transition. But planning is the moment where communities either gain clarity or lose momentum. Completing this project meant building stronger community readiness to deploy EV infrastructure, clear priorities for fleet electrification, aligned partner coordination for implementation, improved competitiveness for funding and investment, and a repeatable framework that can be replicated in communities across Illinois and beyond.
Electrifying transportation is one of the most important shifts communities will face in the coming decade, not just for emissions reductions but also for long-term economic opportunity, community resilience, and public benefit.
