STM taken to task over major order of hybrid buses

Group says purchase will delay fleet’s conversion to fully electric by decades

Environmentalists and industry insiders are taking issue with the city’s decision to order nearly 1,000 hybrid buses, saying there are cleaner and cheaper alternatives available. In June, the Société de transport de Montréal was the lead bidder in a nearly $3-billion purchase order for 2,355 hybrid buses on behalf of itself and eight other transit agencies in the province. The STM will receive 830 of the buses, to be delivered between the years 2020 and 2024. The new buses will replace older buses being retired, and add 300 to the overall fleet to improve service. “The hybrid buses we bought are the best, the most efficient and the most environmental choice we could have made,” STM vice-president Craig Sauvé said at city council this week. However, not everyone agrees. The Association québécoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique has criticized the STM’s choice, saying it will delay the conversion of the fleet to fully electric by decades. The STM, and all transit agencies in the province have been mandated to buy only electric buses starting in 2025. “We find this to be a very large error to buy so many hybrid diesel buses; these buses will be in service for at least (many) years, and we know with the climate crisis, we have to get away from fossil fuels,” said André Bélisle, the association’s president and co-founder. Sauvé has not returned repeated requests for an interview on the STM’s choice of hybrid technology for its buses. Bélisle said the city should be getting away from diesel-burning buses, and move to more environmentally friendly alternatives like renewable natural gas, now being used in St-Hyacinthe. He explained using renewable compressed natural gas allows the city to repurpose methane from decomposing waste that would otherwise be released into the air and cause pollution. Burning the methane in a bus’s engine would emit carbon dioxide, a much less polluting gas, making it a carbon neutral proposition. “We have been recommending this for decades in Montreal,” Bélisle said. The city is in the process of going to tender to build several biomethanization plants, but the STM has no plans to buy buses or equipment that would be powered by the biomethane that would be produced from those plants. Bélisle said if the city doesn’t move toward renewable natural gas, it should consider a much more ambitious purchase of electric buses. The STM has ordered 40 electric buses so far, but the agency said it’s not yet ready to convert its fleet, saying the technology hasn’t been adequately tested. Pierre Langlois, an industry consultant on clean technology for buses, agreed electric buses make the most sense for Montreal, as the province has a glut of electricity and it is made without burning fossil fuels. “Already, the city of Shenzhen has bought 16,000 electric buses,” Langlois said. “I think we’re not audacious enough with the adoption of electricity, and that’s the cleanest technology.” The choice of hybrid diesel-electric buses has also been criticized by industry insiders, because it requires more to maintain them. Recently Renée Amilcar, the STM’s executive director of buses, said the hybrid buses are causing the agency much more in maintenance costs because the buses are all equipped with particulate filters that can’t get hot enough to burn out all the particles trapped inside them. “These engines are more appropriate for the trucking industry and long-distance driving,” Amilcar said, adding that buses make too many stops and starts when driving in the urban setting. In fact, the STM’s buses appear to be in a maintenance crisis, with buses breaking down at least twice as often as those in Laval, Toronto and Manhattan. Amilcar said electric buses will have fewer components to maintain, and likely result in much lower maintenance costs, especially since brakes on electric vehicles tend to last much longer. Alain Mercier, the first vice chair of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, said hybrid technology is not to blame, because even diesel buses have particulate filters. He said hybrid buses are more efficient in urban areas, because of the frequent stops and starts.