TTC becoming the cleaner way

New fleet has potential to make system greener and cheaper to run
SHANE DINGMAN
With recent orders for shiny new subway cars, hundreds of buses and the continuing search to find the right type of new streetcar, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to modernize the much-neglected Toronto Transit Commission.
But the new equipment isn't meant to simply replace torn seats and rusting hulls. The city's goal is to improve the system while also reducing its environmental impact.
By 2008, barring any sudden spending binges in other cities, Toronto will have the largest fleet, per capita, of diesel-electric hybrid buses in North America.
Toronto, with 150 hybrids in service by the end of November, has made 10 per cent of its bus fleet green. The next 220 will arrive in 2007, and 140 more have been locked in for 2008.
Out of a projected 1,700-bus fleet, those 510 hybrids -- which will cost taxpayers $382-million over three years -- will represent 30 per cent of the vehicles pulling up to TTC stops.
By comparison, the Metro Transit Authority in New York City, which began a pilot hybrid project in 1998, has 325 hybrid buses, with 500 more coming in the next few years. With a total bus fleet of more than 4,500, that will represent about 18 per cent of MTA's buses, up from a current share of 7 per cent.
As part of its multipronged effort to go green, the TTC phased out regular diesel fuel in favour of a 5-per-cent biofuel, in this case soy oil, in all of its vehicles.
"We use 65 million litres of diesel fuel a year -- that 5 per cent is 3.25-million litres saved," notes TTC vice-chair Adam Giambrone.
"The point about biodiesel is that it's easy to do, it saves you a little bit of money and it doesn't do anything to your engines -- why not just do it? And that's what we did."
The hope is to eventually get that biofuel content up to 20 per cent, but warranty issues for vehicles are a stumbling block. Manufacturers point out that no long-term studies have addressed the impact of all that soy on engine parts.
The TTC's first green move was to use buses fuelled by natural gas, but the maintenance costs proved daunting and the last of that 125-bus fleet will be out of service by year's end.
Now the cleanest bus in the TTC stable is the Orion VI "low-floor" hybrid, which pairs a six-cylinder, 260-horsepower clean diesel engine with a 250-hp alternating-current induction motor. The bus not only recharges its roof-mounted batteries with the diesel but also captures the energy normally lost in braking.
It's estimated that each Orion hybrid issues 37 per cent fewer greenhouse emissions than a conventional bus, spews 40 tonnes less carbon dioxide per bus each year, and sucks up 20 to 30 per cent less fuel.
Every little bit helps, given that the TTC recorded more than 431 million rides in 2005, up 13 million from the year before, and the bus fleet travels almost 103 million kilometres a year.
Thanks to a rare moment of federal interest in urban transit, going greener was a financial no-brainer for Toronto: The former Liberal government's transit deal means that each hybrid bus's $750,000 price tag -- 50 per cent more than a conventional clean diesel bus -- will be shared by the three levels of government.
And, in a welcome change, Queen's Park kicked in a bit more than its fair share to put the TTC's per-unit cost at about $200,000, which means that with expected fuel savings of about $180,000 over the 18-year lifespan of each bus, adding large numbers of hybrids is an economic win.
"When we looked at the fuel savings, that basically paid for the capital investment," says Bob Boutilier, deputy general manager of surface operations at the TTC. "They fit right in, they come right into your garage and they are ready to go."
There are less technological but still important tasks ahead for the TTC, such as reducing idling time for vehicles, which sometimes accounts for half the operating time.
As well, Mr. Giambrone says, there are funding obstacles at the provincial level when it comes to replacing Toronto's aging streetcar fleet, finding alternative sources for the electricity that runs the streetcars and subways, and expanding to add more buses, streetcars or subway lines to growing areas of the city.
"If we're serious about being a transit city, there has to be funds to allow for intelligent expansion," says Mr. Giambrone. "To be more green ultimately means more riders, and that means less people are using cars."
But for all the advantages the hybrid buses have over conventional diesel, the vehicles are still well short of the goal of zero emissions.
"We had to find a product to bridge between now and hydrogen fuel cells," says Mr. Boutilier.
Hydrogen fuel cells are viewed by many as the future of automobiles, but Mr. Boutilier had a first-hand look in California at the limits to the current technology.
For the past year, the Valley Transit Authority in San Jose has been running a trial of three Ballard hydrogen fuel-cell buses for the California Air Resources Board, a part of the California Environmental Protection Agency charged with implementing the state's plans to reduce air pollutants.
"They only have a range of about 150 miles, and they are kind of sluggish," Mr. Boutilier says. And along with hefty price tags ($3.5-million a bus), the fuelling systems proved to be problematic.
"Most people have said that it's still well into the next decade before you'll see a product that is feasible, that can be used in real-world conditions," says Mr. Boutilier.
"That leads us back to hybrids. We're buying buses today that will last at least 18 years . . . so we have no need or desire to get into hydrogen until at least seven or eight years from now, and even then it would be almost an experiment."
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