That’s the answer to the question (raised here in September), “Should transit agencies buy hybrid buses?” At least, it is in the case of The Rapid, the transit agency for Grand Rapids, Michigan.
With the usual fanfare, The Rapid took delivery on five hybrid-electric buses some three years ago. These buses cost $510,000 each, or about a $220,000 premium over a plain Diesel bus of the same size. Agency officials predicted the buses would get 8 to 10 miles per gallon, compared with less than half that for ordinary Diesel buses.
A local transit blog, however, released a document showing that the new buses fell a bit short of this target. In fact, they only get 5.13 miles per gallon, compared with 4.45 for normal buses.
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According to the 2008 National Transit Database, the average Rapid bus travels about 32,400 miles a year, which means the hybrid buses are saving about 965 gallons of fuel per year. If The Rapid pays $3 a gallon (which is high considering they buy in bulk and don’t have to pay fuel taxes), there would be a 76-year payback period on the hybrid buses. Since the average life of a bus is only about 12 to 16 years, The Rapid’s hybrids were nothing more than an expensive form of public relations.
One caveat: the 4.45 mpg applies to The Rapid’s average Diesel bus, and The Rapid’s average bus is about 10 percent smaller than the hybrid buses. But even taking this into account, hybrids are not an attractive option.
Often the diversion of gas tax funds to transit is justified by arguments that it is reducing congestion for auto commuters. Data on whether transit does reduce rush hour congestion would impact the policy choices on how the gas tax is divided.â€
Rail transit does not reduce Highway demand. Rail transit provides an alternative to sitting in traffic on the highway (albeit often involving standing in a rail car).
Daytime highway demand in general simply expands to fill the capacity. Whatever a rail transit line takes away from a highway’s traffic is quickly replaced by latent demand for other trips. The only way to eliminate highway congestion is to eliminate highways. Highway congestion can be reduced by ripping up individual lanes of a freeway. This has been amply demonstrated by the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and the West Side Highway in New York.
OTOH, if you want more congestion, you can simply build more and wider highways. 16 lane freeways in Chicago and Atlanta amply demonstrate that with their daily standstill of traffic despite theoretical 35,000-40,000 vehicles per hour capacity.
Note from the Antiplanner: This is a word-for-word repeat of a comment made by Andrew yesterday–a comment that metrosucks disagreed with. I don’t know why metrosucks is repeating the comment today, but it is not his comment.
metrosucks: Daytime highway demand in general simply expands to fill the capacity.
JK: Are you telling us that people will drive 12 hrs/day if there is enough road capacity?
metrosucks: Whatever a rail transit line takes away from a highway’s traffic is quickly replaced by latent demand for other trips.
JK: Filling latent demand has another name:
Satisfying people’s needs and wants. Do you have a problem with that?
The fact is, increasing freeway capacity takes traffic off of less safe arterials which then take traffic off of less safe lesser roads all the way down to reducing traffic in neighborhoods. Do you have a problem with that?
To suppose that increasing road capacity to the point where traffic flows freely is impossible, requires the ridiculous belief that people will dedicate all their waking hours to driving if the roads are not congested. Clearly this does not happen in smaller cities without congestion problems. This greenie claim is clearly garbage.
For a balanced treatment see: http://www.portlandfacts.com/roads/buildwayout.htm
Thanks
JK
Karlock, you know what you write is BS.
If you were serious you’d push for congestion charging.
the highwayman said: Karlock, you know what you write is BS.
JK: Why do you hide your real name?
Thanks
JK
The Antiplanner wrote:
According to the 2008 National Transit Database, the average Rapid bus travels about 32,400 miles a year, which means the hybrid buses are saving about 965 gallons of fuel per year. If The Rapid pays $3 a gallon (which is high considering they buy in bulk and don’t have to pay fuel taxes), there would be a 76-year payback period on the hybrid buses. Since the average life of a bus is only about 12 to 16 years, The Rapid’s hybrids were nothing more than an expensive form of public relations.
One caveat: the 4.45 mpg applies to The Rapid’s average Diesel bus, and The Rapid’s average bus is about 10 percent smaller than the hybrid buses. But even taking this into account, hybrids are not an attractive option.
Randal, do you know if any similar analysis has been done for transit buses that use CNG (compressed natural gas) instead of Diesel fuel?
I know that CNG buses require special fueling equipment at each bus garage where they are parked and maintained, and that it takes much longer to fill the fuel tanks with CNG than it does to fill a similar transit bus with liquid Diesel fuel.
I have also heard assertions that CNG buses emit less pollutants into the air (as compared to similar Diesel buses), but I am not at all sure if those comparisons take into account the nationally mandated use of ULSD (ultra low sulfur Diesel) fuel for all highway vehicles with Diesel engines and current (2010) Diesel emission controls for model year 2010 and after.
C.P. hit on something that should be the talk of the town regarding transit bus fuel. CNG will be cheap, plentiful, and less polluting for years to come. It takes rather minor modifications and since the buses return to the barn every night fueling is not an issue. My local transit agency (RVTD in Medford) used to run CNG buses but for some reason does not any longer. With air quality problems in the Rogue Valley a gradual switch back to CNG would make sense.
CPZ,
No, I haven’t not seen any detail analyses for CNG vs. low-sulfur Diesel. I’ll keep an eye out, and if you find one, please let me know.
The Antiplanner
Note from the Antiplanner, continued
I figured that people would realized it was Andrew’s message I was aping. Who would actually want to steal the utter lie Andrew felt comfortable posting?
Antiplanner wrote:
“No”.
Whereas the correct answer is:
“Yes”.
There are many reasons to buy diesel hybrids. One is a marked reduction in pollution. Another is far better fuel consumption in the urban cycle – together with reduced costs for things like brake linings, which turn into a lethal powder when the brakes are applied.
The Federal Transit Agency has these values from 2007.
http://www.transportpolicy.org.uk/PublicTransport/AdvancedBuses/Graphs.htm#Figure7
This shows that the diesel bus is expected (Figure 8) to get 4.1mpg in the CBD, whereas the diesel hybrid is expected to get 5.2mpg. In fact, almost exactly the values that Antiplanner quotes.
The problem appears to be instead, that The Rapid team took the glossy sales brochure home. And they came to believe every word of it.
Figure 9 of the URL above shows that you will have to pay more per seat-mile with diesel-electric hybrid buses. From a reasonable 3.8 cents per seat-mile for diesel to a wallet-crushing (in Antiplanner’s eyes) 5.1 cents per seat-mile for hybrid. When the rail organisations are demanding billions of dollars, what I don’t understand is why this premium (of 2 cents per seat-mile) is unacceptable. Would the customer even stoop down to pick 2 cents up off the sidewalk?
Antiplanner wrote:
“No, I haven’t not seen any detail analyses for CNG vs. low-sulfur Diesel. I’ll keep an eye out, and if you find one, please let me know.”
It’s in the URL of the above posting.
For some reason “Figure 8” has turned into a yellow face. Technology.
First Buses in the UK tried CNG, and it was a failure. The buses were dumped repeatedly further along the hand-me-down hierarchy of the local bus depots. Nobody wanted them. CNG is a waste of space.
I think the Antiplanner was looking at this solely from a cost standpoint. It appears that the hybrids aren’t really much more efficient than regular buses, but cost a lot more.
Francis,
I agree with you here. The fuel savings by themselves cannot be the sole reason for making such a decision, but the marked reduction in certain pollutants, not to mention noise, is a big plus in most situations. Of course, an empty bus is an empty bus, and I’m sure that Grand Rapids has more than a few of them.
I also agree that the difference operating costs would be relatively minor and not a deal-breaker. But that leads me to wonder, why is there so much wailing and gnashing of teeth when such a modest increase in fares is proposed?
I think the Antiplanner was looking at this solely from a cost standpoint.
He was looking at it from agency cost standpoint. Emissions were not mentioned.
MJ wrote:
“But that leads me to wonder, why is there so much wailing and gnashing of teeth when such a modest increase in fares is proposed?”
There’s a story that I read on the internet, so it my be apocryphal, but here it goes.
A man goes into a bicycle shop with his bicycle, to get some parts changed over. A while later he goes back to get it. The salesman suggests as a parting comment that he could spend $30 on some new gears, and save much more than that on the chain which the current gears were chewing up. The cyclist sucked his teeth, declined, and loaded the bicycle into the back of his $30,000 truck.
This happens a lot with buses, too. Buses are supposed to be cheap, in the way that rail never is. So everything is pared to the bone. Why buy advanced technology when a diesel bus will do? Why pay well when your staff can sulk instead? The end result doesn’t impress the public who go off and buy cars, the bus patronage slumps, and the cost per seat goes crazy.
The correct solution is to a) buy nice buses b) run them on sensible routes (ones that might actually make some money) c) send colour brochures to people within the catchment of the new bus route, so that they know it’s out there d) cut the up-front cost of the buses to as little as possible (preferably free) using electronic ticketing.
Almost anything that saves energy also reduces air pollution. So if something is not cost effective at saving energy, you can’t make up for it by the fact that it reduces air pollution. Anything that would be more cost effective at saving energy would also be more cost effective at reducing air pollution.
Rather than spending a half million to more than a million dollars per supposedly green bus, transit agencies would do a lot better routing their existing buses on routes that attract more customers. The average Rapid bus has 36 seats and carries, on average, less than 8 passengers. Increasing that 8 to 12 or 16 would do far more to save energy than buying hybrid buses.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Rather than spending a half million to more than a million dollars per supposedly green bus, transit agencies would do a lot better routing their existing buses on routes that attract more customers.”
If there was a massive difference in cost, then I would agree. But the cost difference is, according to the FTA data, just 2 US cents per seat-mile. So they should do both.
“Almost anything that saves energy also reduces air pollution. ”
That is sometimes true, sometimes not. Modern diesel cars are efficient, with powerful engines, whilst having a better fuel consumption than petrol cars – but with dirtier emissions, particularly under hard acceleration. If you drive enough miles, you save enough fuel to make the diesel car pay, but it is still a dirtier technology.