City buys smaller buses to save costs

By GILLIAN SLADE on January 22, 2020.

NEWS PHOTO GILLIAN SLADE
A passenger approaches one of 11 new shorter buses that the city has purchased. The buses are 30 feet long, 10 feet shorter than the older ones. Five of the new buses are diesel and six are compressed natural gas.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade

The city is replacing 11 of its buses with ones that are 10 feet shorter, expecting to save money in the process.

Simon Amos, manager of transit services, says this was about replacing buses that had reached the end of their life and the fact that some bus routes do not need a larger bus.

“These smaller buses will cost less to operate and are better for the environment,” said Amos.

In the past the city has said there would not be significant cost saving if it went to smaller buses. In September 2014 former transit manager Richard Sieppert said wages remain the same, as do overhead costs, plus smaller buses have a life cycle of about eight years while the bigger ones last about 10.

Amos says older buses need more maintenance and the new ones will be cheaper to run over the next five years simply because they are new. There is the potential for the smaller buses to use less fuel as well.

“We don’t know what the true cost savings will be … (but) we’re expecting to save money,” said Amos.

This was also the first time the shorter buses were available to run on compressed natural gas.

Five of the new buses are diesel and six are CNG. The provincial Green Transit Incentives Program (GreenTRIP) funded two-thirds of the cost of the vehicles, said Amos.

“Introducing more CNG to the fleet will reduce fuel costs,” said Amos. “New technology in the last five years has allowed us to make this move.”

With a push for greener energy the future of personal vehicles appears to be electric, and two years ago Edmonton switched its fleet to 40 electric buses at a cost of about $40 million, through a funding partnership, to reduce emissions.

Although Medicine Hat has not chosen electrification at this stage it is monitoring this, said Amos.

“The electrification of buses is in its infancy still and Medicine Hat has a commitment to CNG,” said Amos. “We have our own CNG station and the cost to go to electrification is huge … For the foreseeable future CNG is where we’re at. Calgary is committed to CNG as well.”

Amos says each electric bus costs about $1 million. A CNG or diesel bus costs between $450,000 and $650,000. He was not sure of the infrastructure cost of a battery recharging station for buses.

Amos notes the new diesel buses are “clean energy” buses with engines that produce less greenhouse gases and have improved fuel economy over conventional buses. CNG should also reduce engine maintenance. The lifespan of a CNG bus is about 15 years.

The electricity for an electrical vehicle has to come from somewhere and there are emissions somewhere along the chain, said Amos. The next procurement of buses will be in 2024 and electric buses will be under consideration.

Once the new buses are rolled into the fleet and the aging vehicles are retired, the city will have a fleet of 19 buses, 14 CNGs and five diesels, down from 23 regular buses a few years ago. There were then, and still are, 13 special transit buses.

In October 2018 the city announced it was scaling back its plan to convert all of its fleet of buses to CNG, and include some diesel, to avoid potential problems if the city’s fuelling station on 10th Avenue SW near the airport was to go out of service.