OC Transpo not pursuing new green bus technology

175 diesel-electric buses are up for sale as city’s hybrid program runs out

OC Transpo is monitoring alternative bus technologies tested in other cities but has no plans to pursue new green-fleet initiatives, other than launching an electrified rail line this year.

Operations director Troy Charter said Wednesday that Transpo is keeping its eye on both Toronto’s experience testing fully electric buses and Calgary ’s transit service introducing buses that run on compressed natural gas.

“Right now, we’re waiting,” Charter said in an interview, pointing to the Confederation Line LRT launch as the biggest opportunity to green Ottawa’s transit service.

Charter said there are other cost considerations when it comes to changing the bus fleet’s technology, such as facility and equipment requirements.

Transpo is looking for someone to buy its 175 diesel-electric buses, ending the agency’s operation of a green bus fleet.

While the hybrid buses never reached their planned cost efficiencies, Charter said there have been other hurdles running a handful of buses that aren’t like the rest of the diesel-powered fleet.

Available parts, vendor support, capital costs and additional staff training are also challenges to operating the hybrids, he said.

Charter said buying the hybrids 10 years ago wasn’t a mistake.

The transit system changed after the 2008-09 driver strike and the 2011 route “optimization.”

“They still have been a great, reliable bus for our fleet,” Charter said, but with Transpo looking to cut the number of buses with the start of LRT, the hybrids were the obvious ones to go.

Transpo has 987 conventional buses and is aiming to reduce the fleet by 170 to 180 buses after the LRT line opens in November.

The hybrids will satisfy most, if not all, of that reduction target.

The conventional bus fleet also includes New Flyer articulated buses and 40-foot buses, and Alexander Dennis double-decker buses.

The hybrids, which hit Ottawa roads in 2008, aren’t suited for the city’s current “interlined” transit network, which has buses take on different routes during an operating day.

The hybrids are most efficient on routes with low speeds and many stops, but Transpo needs the buses to also run on routes with faster speeds and fewer stops.

Charter said the hybrids will continue to run until Transpo decommissions them when the Confederation Line opens.

There’s no guarantee that Transpo will be able to sell the hybrids.

The agency this week published a request for information to see who’s interested. Sales revenue would be the cherry on top of the real cost savings realized from not operating the buses.

The request for information also asks potential buyers to respond if they ’re interested in 82 New Flyer D40i Invero diesel buses.

Charter said those buses are at the end of Transpo’s life cycle.

The agency just ordered 82 diesel buses from Nova Bus.

Council recently approved a more ambitious corporate target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The expansion of electrified rail lines will help, but Transpo will still need to run buses where trains won’t go, and for the foreseeable future, those buses will run solely on fossil fuel.

“I wouldn’t see it as a pressure by any means,” Charter said, noting the city ’s commitment to LRT, but he accepts that Transpo needs to look at ways to be greener.

They still have been a great, reliable bus for our fleet.