When you have TransLink operating diesel buses on our otherwise zero emission trolley bus routes, how serious is the government in reducing GHG emissions? Shouldn't someone in Victoria be taking a stick to TransLink instead of just making press releases with lofty aims to reduce GHG emissions? 

So much for Gordo's "green" promises. Another promise broken. What a bunch of doofs! LIbERalS! They make me laugh! 

Nice to see the Carbon Tax working as it should. 

What are we paying a carbon tax for? 

Of course they are up. Only the little guy pays carbon tax, while all the big emitters are exempt or subsidized to emit more. 

I do prefer electrified transit but really, should diesel buses be our focus for reducing emissions? Not at this time. A regular sized bus takes 40 cars off the road- we are already making an emissions savings with diesel buses. Yes, we should be running electric trolleys on trolley routes but TransLink ain't the problem- it is the blacktop gang in Victoria.

Our focus should be to greatly reduce the single occupancy vehicle. Most of the trips in this region are less than 5km, let's make it easier for people to move themselves and their stuff for those 5 km. Walking, cycling, transit (diesel or electric) let's just make it happen- we can petition and rant but the blacktop gang just won't listen, time to get out and start doing it in our communities and force government to catch up.

Walking/cycling school bus for kids; neighbourhood car sharing; personal car-free days; plant a garden and eliminate a couple trips to the grocer, etc. There are many means and methods, go do it and invite a neighbour. 

Raise the carbon tax! How are we going to cut down our carbon emissions and stimulate investments in clean energy infrastructure if we don't raise the cost of fossil fuels? 

Sure, 50% of us work within 5 km of work and most people are just too darn lazy or worried about messing up their hair to walk or cycle. They spend hours in the beauty salon on their hair and don't worry about their fat asses.

Now, lets think about that bus taking 40 cars off the road as you suggest. How many transit users who make less than it costs to buy a car are able to buy a car? How many have $10,000 at the end of the year to finance, insure and operate a car? I would say possibly 20% of people on the bus, and the rest on the bus are too destitute paying $1,000 to $5,000 per month on their mortgage or rent here. If pigs had wings, they could fly and if all people on transit could drive, you’d be right but you are wrong. You've been reading too much TransLink propaganda.

You have to consider all the hours that the bus is operating empty of partially full to compare it to cars, as well. If you do, according the 2009 TransLink Annual Report, the bus might carry 20 people on average continuously on a very busy route.

So if you do consider this, the bus is only removing the people who could buy a car for the 20 people who are continuously on the bus: (20)(20%) = 4 cars. But wait again, many people car pool and you have to divide this number by 1.5 to arrive at real number of cars which is now 3 cars. Because a diesel bus consumes as much fuel as 10 cars, that eco-smoking and painfully loud diesel bus which causes cancer and asthma, unlike a car, just put 7 cars on the road plus a host of toxins which the cars never would have put in the air. Think before you spout off because you obviously don't know much and contribute to the wealth of ignorance in our society.

What's that song: "It's a been a while ... everything that I can remember is f'kd up as I remember ... just make this go away .. it's been a while since the candle lit" ... have a good day and hope you learned something EVO.

signed,
chemical engineer
 

In the first paragraph, I meant to say: "Sure, 50% of us live within 5 km of work ... ". In any case, you likely don't get the calculations and logic. 

Dear Chemical Engineer,

You should have signed your comment "arrogant cranky bitch with low self-esteem " or somesuch since you are more interested in insulting me and taking space to show us how clever you are than sharing information in a genuine attempt to correct my thinking.

To answer your question, I am saying that electric transit is preferable, however, campaigning against diesel buses that are already on the road is wrong headed since it is the SOV that is the major source of global warming emissions on our roads. That is far different than supporting the purchase and deployment of more diesel buses.

You go on about people buying cars, using made up percentages no less. In my example I wasn't saying that a regular bus would prevent 40 cars from being purchased. I wish that were true. I was saying that a loaded bus equals 40 fewer people driving a car at that time. By shifting more trips from car to transit we will reduce CO2 emissions because those 40 cars are still sitting in the driveway. Sure, not all buses are full all of the time but I am confident that we are making an emissions savings, even with diesel buses, over the lifetime of that bus. As more people shift from cars to transit then those savings will increase. You're the engineer though so you can do the math for us.

To convince people to give up purchasing cars, more than an electric trolley bus service will be required. A diversity of travel options is key.

 

Hey EVO,
I drive a 40 mpg hybrid mini-van and shuttle 12 little rug rats to soccer practice. Is my mini-van more or less polluting than a 40 seat 3 mpg diesel transit bus?  

Your right, it was a low shot. I shouldn't be putting anyone down. Thanks for correcting me.

I'm do the math for you now:
A diesel bus gets 1/10th the fuel mileage of the average car and is on the road 20 times longer than the average driver's 45 minute commute. What pollutes more, 100,000 clean burning cars or 1,000 soot blowing toxic diesel buses causing cancer and asthma?

Before we even start to look at GHG emissions, diesel buses can't possibly be considered the preferred choice over cars because diesel buses emit toxic emissions which cars do not. Maybe the odd diesel bus is harmless but something like 600 diesel bus trips daily on the B-Line route, for instance? Hardly. However, forget that, let's calculate the difference in CO2 emissions between cars and diesel buses:

Approximately one-thousand diesel buses move 100,000 riders daily (200,000 boardings per day in the Lower Mainland, see TransLink web-site). Let x = the CO2 emitted per hour for the car. Then, the CO2 emitted for the diesel bus per hour is at least 10x. The average driver commutes 45 km daily (from the CBC, "Who Killed the Electric Car") for a duration of approximately one hour. The diesel bus, in contrast, operates many nearly empty hours and "Not in Service" hours along with a few hours of overcrowding for a duration of 12 hours to 18 hours daily, on average.

For the miserable ride on the 1,000 diesel buses each day, the emissions are as follows:
(1,000)(10x)(18) = 180,000x

For the comfortable trip in the 100,000 cars each day, the emissions are as follows:
(100,000)(x)(1) = 100,000x

In other words, the B-Lines have almost doubled CO2 emissions in Vancouver so that UBC can sell luxury condos rather than build residences on campus for students and to make TransLink tons of money after the B-Line diesel bus is paid off after one or two years. Don't forget, cars also don't emit toxic levels of lung damaging emissions like the B-Lines, either. Hope this clarifies things. Ask TransLink for a rebuttal. You will be waiting a long time.

signed,
chemical engineer
 

===.>>> Stephen Thompson


I wonder if it would be possible for you to follow-up on this story with another one in which you interview Dr Mark Jaccard and Dr David Suzuki.


Rod Smelser 

How's the three hour sustainable round trip on transit? Soon you'll have that Evergreen Line to ride and all the drug money will be building all those condos along the route. The future looks bright for deadbeat government employees who eat taxes at work and to work on transit. 

Oh Chemical Engineer apparently you have that big long statement ready to go for every Vancouver or Translink article. One which I already debunked.

Let's see, 1/10 the mileage a car gets? Let's say the average mileage is 25 mpg(for cars/trucks/etc from google), what you are saying is that a diesel bus, only gets 2.6 miles per gallon? I find that number impossible to believe seeing as 18 wheelers average around 7 mpg(from google). I also checked on buses and found that for some kind of bus purchased for San Diego in 1995(10 years before our new buses were purchased) was 6 mpg. I'm guessing that was for a regular size bus, but given that the 99 buses are newer, I'd guess they would be similar. So 1/5th the mileage or better would be more accurate comparing cars to buses, which adds up to a lot of difference in total fuel used to your number.

Cars don't emit toxic emissions? I can't take your word on that because the smog, CO, and low level ozone(highly toxic to life) blanketing major US cities would say otherwise. Per vehicle yes, i would imagine buses do emit more though. Let's see 600 bus trips on 99 that transport say 20-30,000+ per day, even at 10,000 that's a lot of cars that would need room to drive and park. Not to mention a lot of exhaust. You are welcome to find and link to proof that the new diesel buses are as bad as you say they are compared to cars(facts please, heresay is easy to find on both sides of the argument).

And then for the rest of your statement about Broadway you generalize about GHG for the _entire_ fleet including routes that are barely utilized to try and prove your main argument that a heavily used route like the 99(which is 50-75% full most of the day and overflowing during the morning/evening hours) is worse than cars. And essentially, you have just proved your own argument wrong for Broadway or other busy routes. Even with extreme #’s such as 600 bus trips(that’s 15 an hour each way for 20 hours with 30 buses which is extreme considering the trip is only 12 km) and say only 10,000(which is nowhere near high enough to be accurate at least for the 99) people moved, _your_ numbers say the B-Line is better than cars.

For GHG:
10,000 cars = 10,000x
30 buses * 10x * 20 hours = 6000x

For Gas(I used km per gallon to make the math easier but makes #’s worse)
10,000 cars, 2*12 km trips each @ avg 25 mpg
So that’s 1 gallon per car per day = ~10,000 gallons

600 bus trips * 12 km @ avg 6 mpg
So that’s 2 gallons per trip = ~1200 gallons

Even 600 bus trips * 12 km @ avg 1 mpg(1/25 of avg car!)
So that’s 12 gallons per trip = ~7200 gallons

As for the routes that are barely utilized, you have to start somewhere and like most things in life you start at a loss(even businesses don't start out making money, they start by spending it to start). Originally the B-Line was barely used and only left at a max of 15 minute intervals, and had lots of room, now its overflowing and leaving at a max of 4 minute intervals during peak hours. 

And oh BTW, Chemical engineer according to translink’s website here - http://www.translink.ca/en/About-TransLink/Media/2010/May/Transit-riders... - they had 10,965,169 bus boardings in March of 2009, that’s ~366,000 boardings per day. Wait, that makes it ~183,000 drivers in 183,000 cars which makes the car emissions at 183,000x and the entire bus fleet at 180,000x.

We can’t forget to add in skytrain, since surely skytrain helps take drivers off the road and with ~122,000 boardings per day in March 2009(no Canada line in 2009), that tilts the numbers another 61,000x towards transit as a whole. (ie. 240,000x for cars, 180,000x for buses).
 

How's the three hour sustainable round trip on transit?
=======================================

Rather well, actually. The WCExpress trains have another car each as of this month.


All we need now is more track time from CPRail and additions to the schedule. Ultimately we should be looking at the main Lakeshore GO train line in Ontario, where the trains run in both directions, from Hamilton in the west to Newcastle in the East, 18 hours a day.


http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/schedules/lstser.aspx?New=


As for the priviledged few, the self-styled 'creme de la creme', all I can say is that the sooner they get their comeuppance, the better it for every Canadian.


Rod Smelser 

Claiming professional expertise on one subject or other is a common trolling tactic. Take those claims with a grain of salt.

Without detailed translclunk statistics, survey's,route time and passenger data, and a lot of time in analysis, it is impossible to get a clear answer. Perhaps some engineering graduate student looking for thesis material? Transclunk being so political is unlikely to release the data.

They should be running the buses on natural gas but because of the utter engineering incompetence and internal politic's so common in BC, have been unable to make the transition.

A much more efficient taxi system where the taxis are shared involuntarily in a kind of bus system using natural gas vehicles would be the a better alternative, but city politicians are too corrupt to even consider messing with this major source of under the table between elections cash.
seth 

@migzy, just because TransLink states millions of boardings, it doesn't equate to millions of people taking transit. Most all people board transit at least two times (there and back). Only 270,000 people in the Lower Mainland take transit. TransLink likes to confuse people like you by stating passenger-trips or boardings to make it seem like all of Vancouver is dependent on transit. In fact, only 12% take transit. I often get in and out of my car multiple time each day (maybe a dozen). Do I have a dozen cars? Does a bus with 40 seats remove 40 cars? My car has 4 seats, is it transporting 4 people?

@EVO, you are wrong as usual, diesel buses get ~3 mpg, if you take cars as 25 mpg instead of 30 mpg it only changes the results by 20% and cars are still less polluting, and I'm not even counting hybrid cars which will soon move the average up to 40 mpg for cars. Diesel exhaust concentration emissions which you can visibly see are toxic and vehicles which do not emit any visible pollution are not. According to this link diesel buses get 1.4 mpg and hybrids 2.3 mpg, so I way underestimated the GHG emissions from diesel buses, try this real link:

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~scintech/hybrid/Technology.html

Case closed!
 

Diesel buses, 2.7 mpg and hybrids, 3.3 mpg, and we could go on and on ...

http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/ebd/chap6.asp 

Usually we don't see I to eye on much but I'll give you the thumbs up this time on the CNG buses. You're off track on the professional stuff, since I have a M.Sc. Chem Eng degree, too!

ce 

According to your math and march 2009 boarding #’s: 366,000 boardings = 183,000 people for buses and 122,000 skytrain boardings= 61,000 people. Grand total: 240,000 people daily, over a year ago, with no Canada Line.

Translink’s 2009 Annual report #’s - http://www.translink.ca/~/media/documents/about%20translink/annual%20rep... (page 13 in the pdf, 23 of document – year in review #’s) - are 188 million _revenue_ boardings for the year or 515,000/day or equating 2 rides = 1 person gives 257,000 people. I’m guessing revenue boardings are where people bought a ticket. Here’s the number to account for people getting off and back on without a new ticket, like you do in your car - _total_ boardings are at 313 million boardings or 342,000 non-revenue boardings/day.
--
Oh BTW, _you_ were equating one person on the bus to one car, so that’s what I used. In actuality - http://www.a2gov.org/government/publicservices/systems_planning/Environm... - US national avg for single occupancy commutes in 2005-2007 is 76% out of all modes of transportation and ~10% for carpools so a total of 86% took a “car”. 76 out 86 = 88% of cars were single occupants, leaving 12% with multiple occupants.

So if the 240,000 passengers on transit used cars, 88% of them or 211,000 would use single occupant cars and 29,000 for multiple occupant cars. Let’s say the rest pack 3 to a car, that’s ~10,000 more cars for a total of 221,000x a single avg vehicle.

And your #’s for total hours of diesel buses/day is a bit off - http://www.translink.ca/~/media/documents/about%20translink/annual%20rep... (page 13 in the pdf, 23 of document – year in review #’s) – seeing as total transit hours for everything in 2009 is 5,954,000 hours, which includes skytrain, Canada line for a few months, diesel and electric buses. That works out to 16,312 hours of transit/day vs your 1000 buses at 18 hours/day(18,000 hours). Now if anything, translink would want to inflate this # to show they are providing more service.

So at 10x GHG and assuming translink ran ALL diesel buses(ie. No trollies or skytrain) it would be 163,120x. We all know translink runs a mix of skytrain, trollies, and diesels. So if we pluck a number out of thin air say 80% of the hours are diesel(13,000 hours), even at 15x GHG emissions of a single car that’s still only 195,000x for buses vs 221,000x for cars.
---
You can’t directly correlate one cities observed mpg to another, especially New York, where congestion means traffic moves very slowly and since buses still burn diesel while sitting, their mpgs go way down. PS: Please reread my previous comment cause even at 1 mpg, the B-Line still beats cars hands down. Even factoring in that 88% would drive alone, that’s still ~8800 gallons of gas vs buses at ~7200 gallons in an absolute worst case of 1 mpg.
--
Avg mpg of US vehicles: http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/...
For new cars sold is 32.6 mpg and new trucks 24.2 mpg in 2009, but for all cars on the road no stats for 2009, so in 2007 the avg car got 22.5 mpg and trucks got 18.0 mpg. Note not much difference is new vehicle mpg avg between 2007 and 2009.
--
Transit use in Vancouver: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=60e2...
According to the 2006 Census – 16.5% took transit to work, up ~5% from 2001, interestingly drivers accounted for 67.3% in 2006, down ~5% from 2001.
 

PS: Your theory about because you can’t see it, means that cars don’t have toxic emissions? Let’s see gases that are clean at minimum toxic levels – Carbon Monoxide(CO), Ozone, Methane, etc”¦ Maybe cars don’t emit visible “soot” but that doesn’t mean car emissions are non-toxic.

And I too wish the buses used a better fuel such as electricity or solar power generated hydrogen.  

Good job, I think that you are just making my case stronger, aren't you? Get away from boardings which is sending you on a tangent. We both seem to agree that roughly 300,000 people take transit, right?

Roughly 1/3 of transit users or ~100,000 people in the Lower Mainland take diesel buses and there are 1,000 diesel buses, right?

Car fuel mileage is ~10x the fuel mileage of a diesel bus, right?

Cars are on the road ~1/20th as long as buses, right?

Actually, if the consider that 100,000 people means 70,000 cars when you take into account car pooling, I was way too conservative in my calculation.

So, the only point of contention seems to the be the fuel mileage of cars. Take your 22.5 mpg even though you forgot to factor in hybrids getting 50 mpg to 60 mpg. If people who took transit drove, we'd still have fewer GHG emissions and toxic emissions. If you don't get it by now, sorry, I can't help. You better sleep on it.

If the Georgia Straight will let me, I'll take a paid advertisement and expose the ones at TransLink for the fakes that they are. Georgia Straight, are you up to it? I’d like to expose TransLink for its deception and lies, especially on the RAV Line which it claims moves 100,000 people daily after replacing the 98 B-Line which only moved 10,000 people daily. How would a half page spread be in an upcoming edition? TransLink will love it!
 

Glad to see that bike lane is making a real difference. 

Nope, boardings aren’t sending me on a tangent. They were simply explaining away your attempt to say that translink doesn’t account for people getting on the bus, getting off, and getting back on again, but they actually do(ie. The difference between revenue boardings and total boardings). And if they were sending me on a tangent, how did we end up with roughly the same daily numbers?
--
And fine for 2009, we agree that roughly 300,000 people/day take transit.

But for people taking the bus nope - http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/KeyFacts-T... - for 2009 there were 129.6 revenue boardings divided by 365 = 355,000 boardings at 2 boardings/person = 177,000 people take the bus(diesel or trolley). Skytrain(non-Canada Line) only transports 60,000 people/daily. For the last 4 months of 2009, Canada Line averaged 28,600 people daily. Grand total people = 177,000 + 60,000 + 28,600 = 265,600 people which fits under the 300,000 people/day. Question is how many of those 177,000 take trolleys?
--
We also don’t agree on diesel bus service hours.

As I stated in my last post Translink's 2009 annual report says that there were 5,954,000 service hours in 2009 for everything. So with 365 days/year makes 16,312 service hours/day. And remember if anything translink would want to err on the high side for total service hours to make them look better and that they can say they are doing an excellent job. But somehow your number of 18,000 service hours/day(1000 diesel buses for 18 hours) for _diesel_ buses is higher than translink’s _total_(diesel + trolley + skytrain) service hours by nearly 2000 hours/day.
--
We also don’t agree on bus mpg vs car mpg.

Translink’s 2009 Statutory Annual Report - http://www.translink.ca/~/media/documents/about%20translink/statuatory%2... page 33 last paragraph) says they spent $24.5 million on diesel($67,000/day). At $0.75/L($0.25 below retail) that’s 90,000 L or at 3.79 L/gallon that’s 23,600 gallons. Translink’s 2009 annual report lists 137,827,000 service kms or 378,000 km/day for everything.

You say buses get 1/10 mpg of cars so let’s use 2.25 mpg. So 23,600 gallons *2.25 mpg = 53,000 miles or at 1.61 miles/km that is 85,000 km. Wait that’s only 23% of the daily km! Even at $0.50/L, its only 128,000 km or 34% of the daily km. Lowering the mpg just lowers the total distance traveled. So either diesel buses only make up a max 34% of the entire service km or the buses get significantly better than 2.25 mpg.
--
Just for kicks, let’ use some of _your_ numbers with that 128,000km or 34%

- if diesel bus hours were 18,000/day, they would only be going 7 km/hour.

- 34% of total daily hours is 5,500 hours/day. At 10X GHG of a car traveling for an hour, that’s only 55,000x a single car. With your 100,000 people taking diesel buses translating into 70,000 cars just diesel buses do better by 15,000 cars.
--
And umm where did you get that 70% number to translate from people to cars? Let’s say out of 100,000 people, 50,000 drove alone. That leaves 50,000 to pack into 20,000 cars or 2.5 people/car. But 50% of people carpool, really? Even if we said 60,000 drove alone, that leaves 40,000 to pack into 10,000 cars of 4 people/car. Even 40% of people carpooling seems extreme and so does packing 4 to a car.
--
My #’s said that the average car gets 22.5 mpg? Nope, the numbers I provided are from the US Dept. of Transportation and those are averages for _every_ car on the road, _including_ hybrids. Similarly for light trucks, that’s for every light truck, including hybrids. Hybrids aren’t being sold in a big enough quantity to make a huge difference, considering all of the cars out there. They are barely even impacting the _average_ mpg for new cars sold in 2009.