First, I'd like to comment again that it has been very helpful to have the support of the gas tax program for purchasing buses. We purchased well over 200. We're getting close to 300, and we'll need more. Our forecast into the future--and we're literally working on this right now; we're consulting with the public this month, and we'll be making some decisions this summer--is that we will need more buses. We have anticipated that into the future, through the gas tax program--which coming up next year will be close to $120 million and will be growing in the next decade over that--we will fully use all of that to acquire the buses we need. We estimate we will need 400 more new buses just in the next decade alone.
The challenge we have with buses is that the purchase price of a bus is about 10% to 15% of the total cost of a bus over its life. It varies depending on whether it's electric trolley or diesel--you'll get a few more years off a trolley--but when you purchase a bus, you have to then bring on operators. If it's diesel, you have fuel costs. You have maintenance costs. You have to rebuild the engines.
For example, to purchase a hybrid diesel today costs about $650,000. Today about 80% of the purchase price is coming off the gas tax transfer program, so it helps us a lot to reduce our capital cost. We know we're making a commitment of about $6.5 million for that vehicle over its lifespan, which we hope will be about 13 years, or maybe we could push it to 15 years before we had to replace it. So those are significant costs.
We have moved over the past five years to increase our bus fee quite significantly, and as I mentioned, we've increased service by 43%. That's only been possible with a lot of new buses. We get very positive feedback from our customers. They love the new vehicles. They're moving to it. We have found in this region we can't keep up to demand. Every time we add a new service, it fills up. People are demanding more.
We have the challenge of finding local sources to cover the costs. In our region, the fare box covers about 52% of the transit costs. That is very high. There are very few cities in North America that come close to that. In most cities in the U.S. it's 25% or 30% at best, setting aside New York or Chicago. So we intend to maintain that cost recovery. Ultimately, your bus service is going to be a subsidized service. So our challenge locally is how we will support that and how we will be able to take advantage of the capital programs that have been proposed by the Government of British Columbia, with support from Canada, to be able to meet the vision that most people over here have--which I know is shared by senior government--to become a region in which you don't need your car to get around, where you can make your trips, have mobility and have a clean environment, and ensure that as we become seniors we can get around.
I hope that addresses your question, sir.