# BC Transit Hybrid Buses Falling Short on Fuel Economy Promise



## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

We seem to be having a run of bad luck with "green" busses here in BC. A decade ago it was CNG powered busses that cost more to operate and could carry fewer passengers. There was also the claim that they put out higher emissions (in terms of CO2 I think).

At least the "made in canada" (western canada I might add) are holding up better. Could be worse, at least they didn't buy a fleet of fuel cell powered busses. That could have been bad. Although I know victoria did try at least one a few years back.


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## TX_Dj (Jul 25, 2008)

I know seattle used to (still does to some extent i think) have electric buses which used trolley lines overhead to power the bus while on-route, and batteries (i think) internally to cover moving from one set of lines to another.










The US used to be populated largely with electric trolleys and electric trolley buses. Then the diesel revolution came along and GM managed to talk cities into using diesel buses instead of electric trolleys and such.

What a shame... the same company whose marketing department would make us believe they have the solution to the problem... were the very ones who created the problem and covered up the solution to start with.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

So GM can be blaimed for that too? I'm too mad to even have a smart ass remark about that.

I remember seeing electric busses like that in vancouver years ago when I was a kid. Seemed quite normal and I didn't give it a second thought except that they seemed to be so old. I don't know if they still operate them. Probably not. Don't get me wrong, I'm a bit of a diesel junkie myself, but when you already have sometihng that works so well, why tear it down?

Campbell River couldn't afford to have that kind of infrastructure, but let me tell you the crappy busses that we have on the road here would blow you away. They're not all bad, but I kid you not, I followed an oil slick home one day (while driving my diesel, BTW). It was only when I passed a few buss stops that I realized that it was in fact a bus that was BADLY leaking oil. There was probably half a liter of oil at each stop.

During the summer they have to disable the busses safety shut off to allow them to run with the rear engine cover open slightly. Apparently they have overheating problems if everything else wasn't enough. As for the leganery black smoke puff, a slight adjustment to the fuel aneroid is all that it would take to correct that, but it would make them slightly more sluggish, can't have that now can we.....

Could be that the busses were good to begin with, but if not cared for this is what happens.

Sure takes the zing out of promoting public transit as a way to save the planet. your (rather *MY*) tax dollars at work..........

Then we have thundersky that is trying to market a line of all electric busses that could run a normal city route without the need for any wires at all http://www.thunder-sky.com/products_en.asp?fid=71&fid2=75. Hey, maybe I should build electric busses! LOL! Just like real world EVs, no big company in this hemisphere seems to want to do that either. I calculate the battery for each bus would be in the range of $100 000 and thats with lithium and not considering any volume discount. Seems to me it would be cheaper to make them all electric instead of hybrid and its not like those "low emission" diesel engines are cheap either. What am I missing here?


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