Nicole Girault: I'm Nicole Girault, and you're listening to TransitTrax, New York City Transit's Podcast service. (Bus sounds) It sounds different than other buses rumbling down the streets of the City -(Bus sounds) - and it should. You're riding in one of New York City Transit's Hybrid Electric Diesel Buses, one of the cleanest buses on the road, according to Gary Labouff of New York City Transit's Department of Buses Research and Development Unit.
Gary Labouff, NYC Transit, Department of Buses: On a hybrid bus, the wheels are driven purely by an electric motor, which is powered from batteries. The bus does have an engine, which runs a generator, but its function is only to charge the batteries. Hybrids in particular are right now the cleanest things that we can buy, and work particularly well in our urban duty cycles.
Nicole Girault: While automakers in Detroit and around the world are just beginning to roll out production model hybrid automobiles, New York City Transit's Hybrid Bus fleet has been on the road for eight years. In fact, New York City Transit helped develop the technology for Transit use, a bold move considering Compressed Natural Gas technology dominated the clean fuel bus market
Butch Seay, Senior Vice President, NYC Transit, Department of Buses: One of the things that we wanted to do early on is we wanted to be involved in all different clean fuel technology.
Nicole Girault: Butch Seay is Senior Vice President in charge of Buses at New York City Transit.
Butch Seay: One of the reasons why it was particularly critical for us is that we have a lot of indoor parking. Many of the agencies or bus companies that switched to CNG early on were those that were located in areas like California, the Southwest, where all of their parking is outdoors, therefore, they only had to do facility modifications to their maintenance area. For us, we would have had to have done it to the maintenance and the storage area and in some older facilities. The cost was really prohibitive for us to do the facility improvements. That made the Hybrid a much better opportunity for us in terms of involving it in our regular fleet.
Nicole Girault: Recently, Transit's Hybrid Bus fleet, the largest in the world, passed a huge milestone. Ten million miles in passenger service, delivering quality transportation, while producing a fraction of the carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen emissions of regular diesel buses.
Gary Labouff: We have installed or are installing these particulate filters in all our diesel fired buses. Particulate filters alone take out most of the particulate matter. The advantage of the hybrids is in NOX emissions and some of the greenhouse gas emissions and the greenhouse gas emission typically go with fuel economy, so a significant drop in that. The NOX comes down, because it's a smaller engine and running on a more favorable cycle. The newer engines are better in general; the Hybrid system makes those new engines better-there's just an advantage just by the hybrid part.
Nicole Girault: While bus managers were confident that technology would perform as designed, environmentalists weren't so sure.
Rich Kessell, Attorney: When the Hybrids first came into New York City, we were hopeful yet concerned, because these are very expensive buses that had the potential of lower emissions and the potential of fuel savings, but nobody had ever run so many Hybrid buses anywhere in the planet, much less in the tough, tough traffic environment in New York City. So we were hopeful but yet concerned about how they would operate.
Nicole Girault: Rich Kessell is an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He's kept a keen eye on the Hybrid Bus program from its inception.
Rich Kessell, Attorney: We're excited about New York City Transit's Hybrid buses, for the same reason a lot people are excited about the hybrid cars that we're starting to see more and more on our streets, and that is it's a new technology that is clean, it offers a way to save fuel, to cut our dependence on imported petroleum, and help make a dent in our global warming problems, and that's four good reasons.
Nicole Girault: New York City Transit's Hybrid Electric Orion 7 buses combine a smaller, clean fuel internal combustion diesel engine with BAE systems HybriDrive series Hybrid propulsion system. Tom Webb of BAE explains how the two systems work together.
Tom Webb, BAE: The internal combustion engine is connected to a generator, so it's producing electrical power and that electrical power is then fed to the electric drive system; the electric drive system is comprised of electrical traction motor and a controller and that is connected to the wheels to drive the vehicle. But it is that combination of the increased electric drive and the regenerative braking that helps make the vehicle smooth to ride, efficient, and much, much cleaner.
Nicole Girault: Webb adds that Hybrid Electric buses are more efficient than conventional buses, because there is no mechanical connection between the generator and the drive system.
Tom Webb, BAE: What that allows us to do is to operate that engine in its sweet spot, at its most efficient point so that we can ensure that that engine is as clean-burning and as fuel efficient as possible.
Nicole Girault: That efficiency also translates into energy, as New York City Transit's Gary Labouff explains…
Gary Labouff: The other feature of the bus since it runs on basically on electricity, when the bus stops, we use the motor basically running backward as a generator, and it then recovers the breaking energy which in other buses goes just to heat, and that energy is put back into the batteries.
Nicole Girault: According to Butch Seay, Transit's investment in Hybrid technology is paying off.
Butch Seay: It has performed better than expected as it relates to maintenance issues and it's been actually out of all the new buses that we have bought over the past ten years, its performance in the first two years has exceeded those of virtually every other bus that we have purchased. In addition to that we've been very pleased with the fuel economy we've experienced, which was much higher than what we had initially expected, so that in of itself particularly given the fact that as fuel prices have climbed, that potential savings becomes an even more important factor.
Nicole Girault: Over time, the Hybrid Electric fleet promises to yield additional savings while producing even lower emission as systems improve and adapt to new technologies, like fuel cell engines when that technology matures.
Tom Webb: Hydrogen fuel cell engine is akin to a battery, if you will, and it produces electrons, which then require a series electric drive system to move the vehicle to take that power and apply it to the wheels. The system that is on the Hybrid Electric buses in New York City Transit today is series electric drive system and it is inherently compatible with fuel cell engine technology.
Nicole Girault: Those advances are years away but that hasn't stopped the accolades. New York City Transit has received the EPA's Clean Air Excellence Award for its role in developing Hybrid bus technology, and the California Transportation Energy Future Conferences 2005 Blue Sky Merit Award for contributions to clean air and energy efficiency. Transit currently has more than 325 Hybrid Buses. More will hit the streets soon, as 500 recently ordered Hybrids begin arriving, and are put into service along New York City Transit bus routes, and on some routes operated by our sister agency, MTA Bus. And that should make the air we all breathe a lot cleaner. For TransitTrax, I'm Nicole Girault, thanks for listening, and thanks for riding with New York City Transit.
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Gary Labouff, NYC Transit, Department of Buses: On a hybrid bus, the wheels are driven purely by an electric motor, which is powered from batteries. The bus does have an engine, which runs a generator, but its function is only to charge the batteries. Hybrids in particular are right now the cleanest things that we can buy, and work particularly well in our urban duty cycles.
Nicole Girault: While automakers in Detroit and around the world are just beginning to roll out production model hybrid automobiles, New York City Transit's Hybrid Bus fleet has been on the road for eight years. In fact, New York City Transit helped develop the technology for Transit use, a bold move considering Compressed Natural Gas technology dominated the clean fuel bus market
Butch Seay, Senior Vice President, NYC Transit, Department of Buses: One of the things that we wanted to do early on is we wanted to be involved in all different clean fuel technology.
Nicole Girault: Butch Seay is Senior Vice President in charge of Buses at New York City Transit.
Butch Seay: One of the reasons why it was particularly critical for us is that we have a lot of indoor parking. Many of the agencies or bus companies that switched to CNG early on were those that were located in areas like California, the Southwest, where all of their parking is outdoors, therefore, they only had to do facility modifications to their maintenance area. For us, we would have had to have done it to the maintenance and the storage area and in some older facilities. The cost was really prohibitive for us to do the facility improvements. That made the Hybrid a much better opportunity for us in terms of involving it in our regular fleet.
Nicole Girault: Recently, Transit's Hybrid Bus fleet, the largest in the world, passed a huge milestone. Ten million miles in passenger service, delivering quality transportation, while producing a fraction of the carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen emissions of regular diesel buses.
Gary Labouff: We have installed or are installing these particulate filters in all our diesel fired buses. Particulate filters alone take out most of the particulate matter. The advantage of the hybrids is in NOX emissions and some of the greenhouse gas emissions and the greenhouse gas emission typically go with fuel economy, so a significant drop in that. The NOX comes down, because it's a smaller engine and running on a more favorable cycle. The newer engines are better in general; the Hybrid system makes those new engines better-there's just an advantage just by the hybrid part.
Nicole Girault: While bus managers were confident that technology would perform as designed, environmentalists weren't so sure.
Rich Kessell, Attorney: When the Hybrids first came into New York City, we were hopeful yet concerned, because these are very expensive buses that had the potential of lower emissions and the potential of fuel savings, but nobody had ever run so many Hybrid buses anywhere in the planet, much less in the tough, tough traffic environment in New York City. So we were hopeful but yet concerned about how they would operate.
Nicole Girault: Rich Kessell is an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He's kept a keen eye on the Hybrid Bus program from its inception.
Rich Kessell, Attorney: We're excited about New York City Transit's Hybrid buses, for the same reason a lot people are excited about the hybrid cars that we're starting to see more and more on our streets, and that is it's a new technology that is clean, it offers a way to save fuel, to cut our dependence on imported petroleum, and help make a dent in our global warming problems, and that's four good reasons.
Nicole Girault: New York City Transit's Hybrid Electric Orion 7 buses combine a smaller, clean fuel internal combustion diesel engine with BAE systems HybriDrive series Hybrid propulsion system. Tom Webb of BAE explains how the two systems work together.
Tom Webb, BAE: The internal combustion engine is connected to a generator, so it's producing electrical power and that electrical power is then fed to the electric drive system; the electric drive system is comprised of electrical traction motor and a controller and that is connected to the wheels to drive the vehicle. But it is that combination of the increased electric drive and the regenerative braking that helps make the vehicle smooth to ride, efficient, and much, much cleaner.
Nicole Girault: Webb adds that Hybrid Electric buses are more efficient than conventional buses, because there is no mechanical connection between the generator and the drive system.
Tom Webb, BAE: What that allows us to do is to operate that engine in its sweet spot, at its most efficient point so that we can ensure that that engine is as clean-burning and as fuel efficient as possible.
Nicole Girault: That efficiency also translates into energy, as New York City Transit's Gary Labouff explains…
Gary Labouff: The other feature of the bus since it runs on basically on electricity, when the bus stops, we use the motor basically running backward as a generator, and it then recovers the breaking energy which in other buses goes just to heat, and that energy is put back into the batteries.
Nicole Girault: According to Butch Seay, Transit's investment in Hybrid technology is paying off.
Butch Seay: It has performed better than expected as it relates to maintenance issues and it's been actually out of all the new buses that we have bought over the past ten years, its performance in the first two years has exceeded those of virtually every other bus that we have purchased. In addition to that we've been very pleased with the fuel economy we've experienced, which was much higher than what we had initially expected, so that in of itself particularly given the fact that as fuel prices have climbed, that potential savings becomes an even more important factor.
Nicole Girault: Over time, the Hybrid Electric fleet promises to yield additional savings while producing even lower emission as systems improve and adapt to new technologies, like fuel cell engines when that technology matures.
Tom Webb: Hydrogen fuel cell engine is akin to a battery, if you will, and it produces electrons, which then require a series electric drive system to move the vehicle to take that power and apply it to the wheels. The system that is on the Hybrid Electric buses in New York City Transit today is series electric drive system and it is inherently compatible with fuel cell engine technology.
Nicole Girault: Those advances are years away but that hasn't stopped the accolades. New York City Transit has received the EPA's Clean Air Excellence Award for its role in developing Hybrid bus technology, and the California Transportation Energy Future Conferences 2005 Blue Sky Merit Award for contributions to clean air and energy efficiency. Transit currently has more than 325 Hybrid Buses. More will hit the streets soon, as 500 recently ordered Hybrids begin arriving, and are put into service along New York City Transit bus routes, and on some routes operated by our sister agency, MTA Bus. And that should make the air we all breathe a lot cleaner. For TransitTrax, I'm Nicole Girault, thanks for listening, and thanks for riding with New York City Transit.
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