Emission and life-cycle assessment of alternative-fuel buses: a case study of the Delaware Authority of Regional Transit

ABSTRACT

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 motivated transit agencies to utilize alternative-fuel transit buses in addition to their popular diesel buses. Transit agencies have planned to add a significant number of alternative-fuel buses to their current transit fleets. This study is to inform policy makers who may allocate public funds for alternative-fuel bus projects to make a smarter decision in this regard. For each of the eight alternative-fuel buses, technologies introduced by the ACT, fuel efficiency, life-cycle cost (LCC) and emission are estimated and compared with the available information for the ultralow-sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel buses. A case study in the State of Delaware is presented to demonstrate how the proposed approaches can be employed to evaluate the relative importance of the most viable alternative-fuel transit buses according to the predefined set of criteria. The results show that buses propelled by hybrid-diesel engine have the least LCC and emissions and are the most suitable alternative for the ULSD buses in the short- and midterm.

KEYWORDS:

• Public transportation
• alternative-fuel bus
• life-cycle cost
• emissions reductions
• transit
• environmental sustainability

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the Delaware Administration for Regional Transit (DART) staff for having provided helpful information and data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.