This is the last in my series of blog posts about air pollution from buses. I’ve done lots of ranting so I wanted to look at what some solutions instead.
What is currently happening
I tried to look up what Auckland Council is doing about air pollution but that took me to an ARC page which I figure is pretty out of date.
Alert reader, Julian Hull, pointed out to me that NZ Bus recently invested $50 million in a new bus fleet and has been rolling them out over the last 6 months. This may explain why there has been a noticeable improvement in some of the buses in Auckland. However, I still see a lot of bad buses around.
The government has also been active on improving air quality over the last few years, continuing to increase emissions standards for used vehicles imported into NZ.
They have also just recently announced plans to increase emissions standards for new vehicles entering the country.
Raising emissions standards is good policy and it does lead to cleaner air in the long-term (there’s a bit of a lag time, while people get rid of older vehicles). The government deserves credit for sticking to it in the face of considerable opposition from the used car industry.
Other solutions we could implement
The researchers who wrote the report for NZTA (PDF) I blogged about yesterday suggested a few ways to reduce the exposure of cyclists and other travelers to bus pollution:
- Include a requirement in bus contracts for buses to meet a certain emissions standard. This would probably often require bus companies to buy newer buses. The researchers noted that newer buses emit much lower levels of ultra fine particles.
- Retrofit buses with particulate filters. The authors mention this particular solution in their literature review but apparently it’s not a perfect one. Although particulate filters might reduce the number of fine particles buses would produce, they could increase the number of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) emitted. I have no idea what PAH are, but apparently they are bad for your health too. Whether this would be worse than the current situation I don’t know.
- Build more off-road cycle ways. The researchers found that exposure to air pollution for cyclists fell dramatically as soon as they moved off the road, even if it was only by half a meter. This is one of the biggest benefits of the cycle highways in my opinion – they get you out of the fumes. This solution benefits pedestrians too but does little for other transport users who are still stuck on the road, behind the buses.
- Put in more stop boxes and other cycling priority measures at intersections. This will mean that rather than waiting beside buses or (even worse) behind them, cyclists can get in front before the light changes. I’d guess that this might also be better for pedestrians’ health because if the bus is set back a bit from the traffic lights they will not have to inhale the fumes while they wait to cross. On the other hand, it does very little for the bus passengers.
My favourite solution is to buy newer buses. I know that buses cost a lot and I do appreciate the investment NZ Bus has already made.
However, for a long time the bus companies in Auckland have been double dipping through the way bus contracts are structured.
As with most things to do with transport finance in Auckland, it’s really complicated (you can read more here) but, basically, the bus companies have been able to cherry pick the most profitable bus routes and run them without subsidies, while getting subsidized by Auckland Transport to run the less profitable bus routes. They’ve kind of been taking the profits without the risk.
The good news is that the bus contracts are up for renewal quite soon and the system has been changed so bus companies can no longer cherry pick routes.
The bus contracting process has not (as far as I’m aware) been put forward for any kind of public consultation or scrutiny so I don’t know what it involves.
Personally, I’d love to see Auckland Transport setting out as part of their contracts with the bus companies a requirement that all their vehicles must meet a certain emissions standard within say 5 years.
Sure this would impose a cost on the bus companies but, on the other hand, air pollution imposes a cost on us all through increased health costs.
I don’t have transport or Auckland specific figures but the last report on this in NZ estimated that the health effects of air pollution cost our economy $1.14 billion per year.
What do you think? Which are the worst bus companies or areas of the city for bus pollution? And what do you think is the best solution?
Electrify buses!
Lucy, you are a blogging machine!
I am old enough to remember the electric buses (trolley-buses) that trawled Auckland’s CBD. My Grandmother and I had a low carbon-footprint as we visited Hector the decrepit parrot in the rooftop playground of Farmers. We had few alternatives as iPods and SUVs had yet to be invented.
i didn’t suggest electric buses as a solution because I thought that a) it would just be insanely expensive and b) I have heard, but it might be nonsense, that they would not run well on the hilly terrain in Auckland. Anybody know of any source to confirm whether this is true.
Antoine – seriously, you remember the trams? Didn’t they pull up the tracks in 1955? My blogging frequency probably has something to do with the fact that I’m working on a project I hate that I don’t get paid for right now…
An additional improvement would be for buses to have exhausts at the top of the bus.
@Lucy: No, not the trams. The “trolley buses” looked just a bus with tyres and a steering wheel but they had arms on the roof that contacted overhead wires.
I agree with greg – the exhaust pipe should be at the top! I’ve seen a few buses made that way, and since then I always wondered why they don’t make them all that way.
good point, sorry I missed including that in my list of solutions!
Exhaust on top for all diesel buses and trucks is a great idea! even though diesel fumes drop (?) but would give you a break from having it blast in your face!
@ Antoine, I am also old enough to remember the trolley buses (41) and the aged Cockatoo! Wellington still had them last time I was there (2007), but they have a tendancy to come off the wires at poorly timed moments. I saw a driver trying to hook one back up with special poles and a huge backlog of cars behind him!
Having one of those anti- idling laws, where you have to turn off your engine after a certain period of time idling, would be good too. It would cut down a lot on noise and also pollution in the city.
Yeah, I thought I read something somewhere about how the diesel buses take a really long time to warm up and so they can’t turn them off for just brief stops? But don’t know – maybe that is also rubbish.
trolley buses are BETTER than diesel on the hills and with the overhead wires in Wellington now, they don’t have to slow too much for the corners
I am a little concerned at the single issue focus in these threads, buses aren’t the only diesels on the streets and they make a huge contribution, the Northern Busway carries something like half a million passengers each month, which is a lot of car trips off the road and a lot of emissions avoided.
Also, I’m 99% certain that bus contracts have required buses to be at at least Euro 4 standard for a while, which sets the standard for the whole fleet, because the bus companies can’t afford to have one fleet for contract services and another for commercial services
I agree with you that pm10s are a curse, but I’m also aware that our city would be much, much worse off without buses, so it’s about the big picture and trying to advance on a number of fronts at once
“Exhaust on top for all diesel buses and trucks is a great idea! even though diesel fumes drop (?) but would give you a break from having it blast in your face!”
I think most of the recent Ritchies buses use this layout… no idea why the equally new or newer NZ Bus models (including the Inner/Outer/City Links) have gone with pipes that just dump to the ground (ie, effectively right on top of the next person following).
Hi Steve. First off, I think it’s pretty clear from the research I cited that actually buses are responsible for much of the air pollution from transport that pedestrians and cyclists get exposed to. So we do need to scrutinize their role in that.
It may well be true that the contract for buses require a Euro 5 standard. I don’t know because I couldn’t find a copy of the contract – let me know if you can. BUt I’d have to say from my own observation of buses around Auckland that either a) Euro 5 standard is not good enough or b) Auckland Transport is not actually doing any work to ensure that all our buses do actually meet that standard. Given that for the last however many years our buses have been reporting completely risible statistics like 99% punctuality that doesn’t seem so unlikely to me.
Second, I agree that buses do reduce congestion and are a much more efficient way to move around. I never suggested that a solution to problem of air pollution from buses was to have less. Personally, I don’t think we should have to choose between having lots of dirty buses and a few clean buses. Instead we should be able to have lots of clean buses. AS a country we could easily afford it by just cutting the motorway budget a fraction.;
Buses trucks and cars are becoming cleaner and we should see the improvement sooner rather than later .We have new emission laws which if your car truck or bus puts out to much exhaust fumes you wont get a wof/cof with out fixing the problem .This new law will get some of the older vehicles in the NZ transport fleet off the road due to the cost of repairing older vehicles .Also they have stopped older used vehicles being imported in to NZ because they don’t reach our new emission standards . As for turning off diesel motors ,there is more wear on a motor when you start it up than any other time(turning motor off and on increases wear on the motor and cost to the company, which is passed on to the end user ) Motors smoke when they are under load ,starting up and pulling away from lights ,going up hills etc .At idle vehicles don’t smoke much unless it’s motor is in poor condition ,which the law above will take care of (it could be as simple as a tune up or getting the injectors cleaned /replaced ,a well maintained vehicle is a cleaner running and safer vehicle )The new emission laws are good law for all NZ so we will see cleaner vehicles and cleaner air soon
on a related note, the Council’s energy and climate change mitigation strategy is open for consultation to 18 July, download here: http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/planspoliciesprojects/plansstrategies/theaucklandplan/climatechangemitigationstrategy/Pages/home.aspx
I’ve only had a quick glance, but it looks like it could do with a bit more active transport and passenger transport emphasis over fancy fuelled cars!