Diesel vs. hybrid: Pinellas weighs options for new buses

The actual PSTA staff and panel members found that out their past week as a $3. 6 million proposal to buy seven 40-foot diesel busses, cleaner burning and more effective than ever, opened a discussion within the relative costs and value of diesel, hybrid as well as electric powered buses.

By the end, the actual board of elected authorities and resident representatives decided to wait another month as well as for another discussion to decide how you can replace the authority’s 200 chartering as they reach retirement age.

PSTA buys about a half-dozen vehicles each year to replace the earliest ones in its fleet, generally after 12 years of support. The authority received thirteen new buses this past 7 days, each of them hybrids, which conforms with its sustainability policy to get buses with cleaner release engines.

But CEO Monique Miller said those rapace, which cost about $700, 000 each, were bought a year ago with federal transport money. That money no more is available, which led your pet to recommend buying diesel powered buses at about $500, 000 each.

Miller mentioned the new diesels, while not because clean as the hybrids, tend to be far superior to the old busses they are replacing.

Julie Keep Bujalski was among the table members who balked. Infirmary, who is mayor of Dunedin, said the board within 2008 decided to buy mixed buses instead of diesels, and not just because gas prices had been rising.

“We made the decision which everything going forward was going to become environmentally friendly, ” she stated.

Board member Joseph Barkley was chairman of the PSTA committee that recommended purchasing the diesels, but said this individual cast the lone political election against it.

“Diesel chartering pollute and are a symbol of aged technology, ” said Barkley, vice-mayor of Belleair Menaces. “We owe it to the citizens to show we worry about the environment when we acquire brand new vehicles. ”

Diesel vehicles send the wrong message, he or she said. “There is no this kind of thing as clean diesel-powered, ” he said.

A number of Sierra Club members and also environmentalists also urged the particular board to reject typically the diesel buses, and to proceed a step farther by buying electrical buses rather than hybrids.

These people maintained that even in up to $1 million every, electric buses are less costly in the long term through fuel repairs and maintanance savings, and have the benefit of absolutely no tail pipe emissions.

Honest Jackalone, Florida staff movie director of the Sierra Club, mentioned Chicago recently added 2 electric buses to the fleet and claims that will using one battery-powered tour bus is the equivalent of eliminating 23 cars from the street each year. The city is preserving $25, 000 a year inside fuel costs for each automobile, or about $300, 000 over the average 12-year life time of a bus.

In Might, Proterra, a South Carolina-based electric bus manufacturer, experienced one of its buses upon display at PSTA’s head office. The buses, powered through an electric motor the size of the beach ball, require absolutely no fuel, oil, filters or even engine maintenance. Built with amalgamated bodies, they are 4, 000 pounds lighter than diesel engine buses and make virtually no noises.

Phil Compton of the Macizo Club, who saw often the bus, urged the aboard to consider buying some.

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