Sweet.
Cherriots shift to clean diesel
They are expected to be cheaper than natural-gas models
EUNICE KIM
Statesman Journal
January 11, 2008
Fourteen new Cherriots buses will hit the
streets this spring, replacing vehicles from the mid-1980s with
state-of-the-art clean-diesel models.
The
first of the new buses rolled into town last month. Salem-Keizer
Transit District officials expect the rest to arrive by the end of
March.
"This is a big deal," said Marcia
Kelley, transit board chairwoman. "You need to maintain two things for
a good transit agency, and that's a qualified work force and a good
fleet of buses."
The new buses, four
40-footers and 10 35-footers, will replace vehicles from 1984 and 1986,
said Joe LaFraniere, director of maintenance and technology for the
transit district.
Ten of those old buses have at least 900,000 miles on them. The normal life expectancy for a bus is 12 years or 500,000 miles.
Transit
officials said good maintenance has stretched the number of days the
district's older buses have been able to remain in operation, but it's
not a permanent solution. Cherriots' fleet drove about 2.5 million
miles last year, LaFraniere said.
"They get used a lot," he said. "They put a lot of miles on every year. Eventually, they need to be replaced."
The
new buses, paid for largely by state and federal money, cost a total of
$4.7 million. Manufactured by California-based Gillig, the vehicles run
on diesel.
That marks a change in thinking
by transit officials, who have been buying Earth-friendly
compressed-natural-gas buses since 1998. Of the transit district's 71
active buses, 44 run on compressed natural gas. The rest are diesel.
In
1996, officials projected that the natural-gas buses would cost less
than diesel ones, but that has not panned out as expected.
LaFraniere
said the cost of replacement parts, which are difficult to come by, and
other factors have resulted in compressed-natural-gas buses being more
expensive -- 15 cents per mile more -- than diesel buses, according to
a 2006 analysis.
The new diesel buses also
are as clean, if not cleaner, than their compressed-natural-gas
counterparts because of an Environmental Protection Agency rule
regulating 2007 diesel trucks and buses, officials said. The Highway
Diesel Rule is expected to result in a 90 percent reduction in harmful
emissions from heavy-duty highway vehicles.
"There's
been progress made on the diesel buses, so it makes them as competitive
as the (compressed-natural-gas buses)," Kelley said.
The
new Cherriots buses will be equipped with a trap that captures the
exhaust particulate matter. That means no black puffs of smoke will
come from behind the clean diesel buses, LaFraniere said.
They
will run on B-20 biodiesel, a diesel mix with 20 percent of the fuel
from a renewable source. All of the other diesel buses in Cherriots'
fleet already run on biodiesel, which burns cleaner than petroleum
diesel alone.
It's supplied by multiple
companies, some of which get their biodiesel from the
SeQuential-Pacific Biodiesel processing plant in southeast Salem.
All
of the factors combine to make the new diesel buses much more
environmentally friendly than their predecessors, officials said.
"It's a win-win," LaFraniere said. "They're cheaper to run. They're cleaner."
By
May, all of the new buses will be on the road, traveling routes
throughout the Salem-Keizer area. After that, there still will be about
13 other buses that are at least 16 years old and need to be replaced,
LaFraniere said.
Ideally, the transit
district would replace six buses every year, so the average age of
Cherriots' fleet was close to 12, he said. The district's diesel buses
are now an average of 21 years old. The average age of the
compressed-natural-gas buses is 6 years old.
"We've been gradually trying to get the fleet to an overall younger age," Kelley said.
