What's Fueling Transit?
Blacksburg Transit Deploys Five Battery-Powered Electric Buses (BEB) Earth Day, April 22, 2021 (photo credit: blacksburg.gov)
Today, in our third and final blog, we will discuss the role that fuel choices play in securing a public transit that is forward-looking, sustainable, and equitable. As we saw in our first transit-conversations blog (“Increasing Transit Ridership is Necessary but Not Sufficient), even though public transit can be an important solution to reducing pollution from the transportation sector, buses that are operated at low occupancy levels may actually produce more emissions per riders than the average personal car.
The Case is Clear on BEBs
A way to guarantee that public transit delivers the significant expected reductions in air and climate pollution is to make the shift from fossil fuel fleets to battery-electric buses (BEBs). While adoption of BEBs is still in the early stages, the data is clear: BEBs are cheaper over the life of the bus and their deployment offers many benefits.
Fuel Costs. Because electric utilities’ rate structures are typically less volatile than diesel prices (which are today 71% more expensive than a year ago), by using BEBs transit agencies enjoy more predictable fuel costs and are able to conduct more reliable financial/budget planning.
Emissions. Besides being more comfortable (running more smoothly and quietly), BEBs emit zero tailpipe emissions, which reduces to nothing their local air pollution (CO2, NOx, HC, PM).
Environmental Justice: multiple studies have shown that historically disadvantaged communities and differently-abled individuals are more likely to be exposed to traffic emissions and suffer from the negative health effects of conventional vehicles. The reduction in local air pollution associated with BEB fleet deployment can help lessen this injustice.
Some Virginian cities are already moving to electrify their bus fleets. In 2020, Hampton Roads Transit in Norfolk received dedicated funding from the state to purchase six BEBs to serve one of its busiest routes in central Norfolk. Additionally, both Blacksburg and Alexandria integrated BEBs into their transit fleets.
(photo credit: WDBJ7.com)
What’s Stopping Us?
More conservative transit agencies are still halting the adoption of BEBs. To better understand the hesitancy, it’s worth mentioning some of today’s main existing barriers to BEB deployment:
Economic Challenges: Higher upfront cost of BEBs and new charging infrastructure.
Planning Burden: Planning for BEBs deployment is more complex than for fossil-fueled buses.
Unfamiliarity: BEBs adoption is in an early enough stage that frugal transit agencies don’t feel comfortable with the “lack of sufficient evidence” of BEBs’ benefits.
Operating Range: Today, the distance a BEB can travel before refueling is shorter.
In view of the many contrasting benefits and barriers of BEBs’ adoption, C3's Transit & Equity report included a life-cycle analysis that showed how purchasing four BEBs is a better long-term investment than purchasing four diesel buses. The analysis, conducted in 2021 (before the recent 71% year over year spike in diesel prices), concluded that over a lifetime of 12 years, buying and operating four diesel buses would be 22% more expensive than buying and operating four BEBs; or, to put it simply, the lifecycle expenses of three diesel buses would be high enough to justify the acquisition of four BEBs at no extra cost. From an environmental and health perspective, a fleet of BEBs instead would reduce climate pollution by 83%, vis-à-vis diesel buses, and eliminate the emissions of local air pollutants.
And What About Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses?
When it comes to other alternative fuel options, compressed natural gas (CNG) buses are popular contenders as, from a financial perspective, they operate at a lower cost than diesel buses. However, transitioning to a CNG fleet would require new (otherwise avoidable) upfront/investment costs (a.k.a. "facility improvements") that might never be fully offset by CNG’s lower operational costs.
From an environmental and health perspective, CNG buses release similar levels of CO2 from their tailpipes as diesel buses, their health benefits are questionable, and they can be even more adverse to our climate than diesel buses when considering all their upstream emissions (which include those from extracting and transporting methane and the combustions and leaks associated with them). Therefore, we are confident that most of the conclusions from C3's Transit & Equity report life-cycle analysis comparison between diesel buses and BEBs would hold for a comparison between CNG buses and BEBs.
That’s particularly true when considering the recently observed and projected increases in natural gas costs: as of April 8th, 2022, “prices at the main U.S. gas trading hub are up 64% this year, touching their highest level since 2008”, while as of Apri 12th, 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that natural gas prices might increase up to 4x in 2023. When combined with the recent track of BEBs performance and profitability quickly improving and the availability of new Federal funding streams (such as those from the “Actions to Accelerate Clean Transit Buses, School Buses, and Trucks”), we are confident that BEBs are bound to be the indisputable best option for either renewal or expansion of any public transit bus fleet.
Next Step? Voice It!
For all the above reasons, and those from the first two transit-conversations blogs, we invite you to join C3's ACT on Climate campaign, and urge Charlottesville City Council to:
Set a goal to increase transit ridership with a focus on bus occupancy levels
Seriously review CAT's fixed-route system and how it could be better complemented with on-demand micro-transit
More actively and profoundly seek community input on transit
Improve the working conditions/standards of CAT employees
Avoid a hasty to investing in CNG buses
Funding and conducting the feasibility study for adopting BEBs
Together, we can help our community move to a cleaner future.
In union,
Caetano
To read Part One: Increasing Transit Ridership is Necessary but Not Sufficient
To read Part Two: Microtransit: Up to Speed in a "Smart" and "On-Demand" Era