Tram versus bus

Recently, WSP environmental consaltancy wrote a report where Bus Rapid Transit Systems (BRT) were compared to trams. Essentially, it was concluded that BRT already today has the same environmental load as trams per passenger kilometre. And, future hybrid and electrical buses will have lower impact than trams. Major contributors to the environmental impact of trams are: i) energy use in operation due to high weight and ii) use of large ammounts of iron for rails.
 
Being a naive Swede I felt quite enthusiastic about the future. I felt it must be quite positive for politicians and authorities now to be able to offer much more public transports for the same cost. It seems reasonable that for the same cost per kilometer cities can offer three times more public transports by using buses and still safegurad the environment.
But, no the study was first met by massive critisism, not only by the tram lobby but also by authorities and politicians.
 
How come, the progress is not welcome?
I have analysed the arguments.
The first wave critisized the study for not taking all benefits of trams into account, environment, noise, transport capacity. When it turned out that the study actually over estimated the benefits of the tram and that buses actually have higher capacity than trams a second wave adressed the rails them self as “positive elements for city planning”.
 
Now close your eyes for a while and imagine your ideal travel to work.
 
……
 
Other travellers doing this exercise state the following factors as important for them:
-short travel time, door-to-door service, no or few changes of transport means,
-comfortable, safe and secure, for some privacy is important others enjoy the interaction with others
-environmentally sane, affordable, low noise level.
 
Very rarely travellers state the mean of transport as important for this type of travel.
 
It seems that for many politicians cost efficeincy is a rather negative property.
It seems that city planers like solid elements running through the city to give structure and permanent stable travel centra and and transport coridors.
It seems that our imagination is not sufficient to use the same elements as for trams (separate lanes, straight comfortable roads, priority in traffic, few stops and rapid boarding and off-board ticketing) for utlising and promoting the most environmentally friendly transports, bus systems.

How do we realise attractive buses?

Yesterday I visited the Future Bus workshop organised by the Technology Strategy Board at the Transport Knowledge Network in the UK. The meeting was hosted by Ian Downie (Volvo Bus) at our UK office in Warwick close to Birmingham.
 
UK is a market where the bus operation is de-regulated, i.e. there are no monopolies and it is free for any operator to open a bus service on any rout. The open competition is aiming at maximising the offers and putting the traveller in focus. Still there are many challenges for the operators that struggle to make buses attractive in particular for car users.
 
One of the questions we got was: “How would the ideal bus travel be for you?”. Never mind the technologies and all the practical details just imagine the ideal travel experience. My group (6-7 persons in each group and six groups) came up with 42 attributes of an enjoyable bus ride, such as: silent, comfortable, quite, private zone, short travel time, ability to work, door-to-door, real time travel information, availability to internet, easy to bring prams on board, indoor waiting at the bus stop etc.
 
High on the wish list was a time-table rout planning information, common for all operators, easy to use, “mother in law” safe as one participant expressed it.
What about making a global mobile phone app for all person transports?
 
Another high priority item was a universal ticket system. There seems to be invisible hurdles that I don’t understand. The taxis introduced a global payment many year ago, credit cards. And, when you park your car you can often pay with the mobile phone, now a days. I can respect that drivers can not deal with cash but why is it so hard to introduce electronic payments in public transports. And, where it is introduced, why are there so often price penalties for electronic payments?
 
The expectations and challenges are very inspiring to deal with in particular in an open market as in the UK. But, infra structure investments and priorities sets the framework for all transports. We know, from good examples such as Curitiba and more recently Bogota and Mexico City, that when the bus traffic is prioritised it does make a big difference. Separate lanes, high quality roads and modern inviting bus stops needs to be provided by society.

White Paper on European Transports

The new White Paper on transports in Europe has the subtitle: “Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system”. This is a dream for an Environmental Director, the environmental principle #1 in the heading!

Read the whitepaper here.

The White Paper contains:
10 goals for a competitive and resource effcicient transport system; benchmarks for achieving 60% green house gas emission reduction, including: Developing and deploying new sustainable fuels, multimodal logistics, increasing the efficiency of transports and infrastructure, 40 hands-on actions to be executed in order to realise the goals.
 
Some of the imediate actions relevant for buses and coaches are:

• Revise motor fuel taxation with clear identification of the energy and CO2 component.

• Phase in a mandatory infrastructure charge for heavy-duty vehicles. The scheme would introduce a common tariff structure and cost components such as the recovery of wear and tear, noise and local pollution costs to replace the existing user charges.

• Proceed with the internalisation of external costs for all modes of transport applying common principles while taking into account the specificity of each mode.

• Create a framework for earmarking revenues from transport for the development of an integrated and efficient transport system.

• Reassess transport taxation where necessary, namely by linking vehicle taxation to environmental performance, reflecting on possible way forward to review the current VAT system concerning passenger transport, and revising company car taxation to eliminate distortions and favour the deployment of clean vehicles.

Knowing that buses and coaches have the lowest envirnmental impact among public transports I feel envy seeing actions such as: “Ensure that liability regimes promote rail, waterborne and intermodal transport.”

I will have to come back in the blog with guidelines for a technology neutral approach to ensure the competitiveness and quality of life in strategy documents.

Buses a moving target

I have previously written about the European Directive for promotion of Clean and Energy efficient vehicles.

You can find it here.

When comparing the environmental impact from different transports, second to bikes, buses nowadays have the lowest impact, lower than the trains running on fossile and emission free electricity.

I have used the methodology to calculate how the life cycle impact of a bus has evolved during the years. The fuel consumption and the emissions have decreased over the years.

When looking at the environmental load per passanger kilometer I used 20% occupancy for the bus and 1.5 persons for the car. For the train I used data from the ADEME study I previously given reference to and assumed an energy efficiency improvement historically of 0.5% per year.

The bus is a moving target. And, it is expected to continue to improve in the future. Hybrid buses offers the lowest impact today