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Why aren't people complaining about the emissions from the T buses?
By marathoner2 on Mon, 06/01/2015 - 7:49pm
I am seeing emissions from T buses is much thicker, nastier in certain parts of Boston vs others. People who live in these areas are impacted throughout the day with this coming right into their homes through their windows. You can wipe the black carbon soot off of floors,furniture. How much are people breathing in? Why isn't the T addressing all of the concerns, not just the higher profile trains impacted by blizzard conditions.
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Comments
No simple answer
Diesel particulate pollution is a worldwide problem for large cities. The MBTA has buses from multiple eras in its fleet, and that means multiple levels of control technologies. You could be seeing mostly older buses without particle traps (I have noticed that the Boston Coach buses are older tech and really stink, as are some of those tourist trap trolleys). It is also possible that the MBTA has failed to maintain the emissions systems properly, and thus the buses are spewing soot. Theyare also known to run specific buses along routes where they are least likely to fail (I've seen a lot of interesting degraded equipment on the 326 express bus line, which makes limited stops).
I'm not sure who you could contact about this. The DEP should be interested, but may not have the resources to check on it. You could also send your concerns to the MBTA, as this could be a serious maintenance issue.
Seriously?
Is this a top level quality post for UHub? Perhaps a valid concern, but it's reads like it was written by a confused drunk person, and there's no source article or data to back up the concerns.
I think it's an interesting
I think it's an interesting topic. No one has a gun to your head.
I dunno
There's a least a dozen more interesting, better sourced and more articulate posts in the comments section every day on this site. Not sure how or why this got promoted to front page. And a little copy editing would've been nice.
The T attempted to address
The T attempted to address this problem by running CNG (natural gas) buses on all the urban core routes.
Unfortunately the CNG buses they bought are unreliable, slow, expensive pieces of junk.
No CNG For you
The issue with the CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) buses goes beyond reliability issues. Boston was the only city to license a CNG refueling depot or set of them. There are only 3 in Boston and all are deemed "temporary." One at Forest Hills wherethe bulk fo the CNG fleets operates from, one at Southampton Street bus yard (mostly Silver line fleet storage), and one at Cabot shops. No other city or town would allow the license of a refueling station so the MBTA was forced to purchase buses that diesel when the next need to purchase came up.
The CNG remain the lowest in emissions but if you can't fuel them, you can't operate them. Blame the cities that refused the refueling stations.
As to hybrids... the technology is not there yet. It's getting there but not there yet
I'm not sure how much of an
I'm not sure how much of an issue cities refusing CNG refueling stations really is, since the biggest northside bus garage is in Charlestown, which is also in the city of Boston. I suspect that needing separate expensive and somewhat hazardous refueling infrastructure is part of why they didn't go all-in on CNG, and the generally lower reliability of CNG buses is why that's a good thing. Also, there's the fact that the 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 86, and 96 can't ever run CNG buses due to needing to use the Harvard bus tunnel.
I do think the new hybrids are a good solution though, they look to be much cleaner and quieter, and seem to actually work as well, so I think hybrid technology is finally ready, it's just that it will take some time to deploy it to replace all the old dirty buses.
Because the T did do something about it
They converted about the entire fleet to CNG, which releases far less particulate matter than the older diesel buses did.
Any more questions?
Not exactly
The buses bought in the early 2000s were CNG, a fleet of about 300 which are used primarily in Southwest Boston using the Arborway fueling station. But they went back to diesel in the mid-to-late 2000s with over 500 buses added to the fleet. The 85 buses bought since 2010 are all diesel-hybrid. Source: http://www.transithistory.org/roster/
But a cleaner diesel than the earlier buses, no?
Also, since one of the tags for this article is "Roxbury," I will also note that the closed down the Bartlett Yard by Dudley Square.
I would have sworn that the buses in Boston were all CNG, but what do I know. I know that buses that go through tunnels are not CNG for safety reasons.
Yes, cleaner diesel
There were changes in 2007 and 2010 that mandated that new diesel engines have particulate control systems. Fuel standards were changed to tremendously lower sulfur so these engines and their exhaust aftertreatment could operate properly.
Now I wonder if the MBTA is getting fuel that isn't low sulfur, and that is putting the catalysts out of commission? It could simply be that they aren't doing proper maintenance, or are running buses that aren't retrofit on certain routes, too.
The MBTA uses low sulfur
The MBTA uses low sulfur diesel fuel
Supposedly
They would have to in order to keep the filters running properly.
That doesn't mean that they are USING low sulfur fuel, however. Do they test their deliveries to ensure what is delivered is what is specified? NYC does this, but Boston?
Why Does It Smell Like Clorox?
Is that scent added as a subliminal message of "cleanliness"?
I believe that's excess
I believe that's excess reagent or catalyst from the process of the catalytic converter acting on nitrogen emissions. The smell should be ammonia and not chlorine, but I really don't know much about diesel emissions, and it's been awhile since I took Gen Chem.
But it should be something along those lines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_catalytic_reduction
Not by a long shot
CNG use was always a small proportion of the fleet. It has to be for practical, operational purposes. CNG has much lower energy density than diesel fuel, requiring more frequent refueling, and then refueling also takes much longer than for a simple liquid. Add to that the special equipment and associated cost of CNG refueling stations, and the time out of service while buses are being refueled during the service day. CNG only works for limited routes which are served by MBTA garages with CNG refueling equipment. Routes can also be limited by height restrictions where low railroad bridges will hit the CNG tanks added on top of buses. Otherwise, yeah, CNG burns cleaner.
Happen to have a citation on when the T "converted "about the entire fleet to CNG"?
Its not the whole fleet, but
Its not the whole fleet, but it is all of the buses at the Cabot and Arborway garages. The majority of bus routes in Dorchester, Roxbury, South Boston, Roslindale, and Hyde Park run out of these two facilities.
I was going to say, I thought
I was thinking, they were all CNG now. I always see the CNG sticker on the back. Buuuut, I am usually in the areas you mentioned above. Thanks!
Suffice to say
In the community tagged in this post, they are all CNG.
ya know what else grinds my gears?!
These clouds!
You could
wipe the "black carbon soot" off my windows all the years I lived nowhere near regular bus service, because it wasn't the buses: it was the cars, trucks, and general other vehicles polluting the air. Buses tend to travel popular roads.
You want your fares to go up
You want your fares to go up even higher, then keep complaining about the T...
That isn't relevant
Meeting environmental standards and properly operating equipment are what we already pay for.
The diesel-hybrid buses that
The diesel-hybrid buses that went into action last fall help a lot. Whenever the 64 gets stuck in traffic around the exchange with the mass turnpike, the diesel engine turns off and it is all electric navigating through the backups. No more idling emissions.
I was really happy when they
I was really happy when they started using the CNG buses. The exhaust from those things was a clear puff of moisture. Recently I have been on Blue Hill Ave behind a diesel hybrid and had clouds of black smoke blown over me every time the bus accelerated. Why have we regressed back to the 1970s?
Energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction?
10+ year old buses got about 3.5 MPG. Then I noticed that newer, low emissions buses went down to 2.75 MPG (based on federal transit database numbers). The new hybrid buses sold based on energy efficiency, might be dirtier again, or in need of maintenance. We have new buses on the #77 and they don't seem dirty. If anything, the electric motor should help with the dirtiest part - pulling away from stops.
Do they ever calculate how
Do they ever calculate how many gallons of fuel are used per person traveling in a vehicle and saved by carpooling/using a bus?
As in, for a car that gets 40MPG with one passenger traveling one mile, 1m/40MPG = 0.025gal/m used. While 2.75 MPG sounds bad for a bus and to travel one mile, 1m/2.75MPG = 0.363gal/m are used. If a bus gets 2.75MPG and has 40 people on it, it still only uses 0.363gal/m, where as forty single-occupancy 40MPG vehicles would use 1gal/m total for a savings of 0.637gal/m .
Sorry this was totally tangential, but something I just thought of and my math could be completely off. It was a fun exercise for me though.
No, because numbers favor driving over the bus
http://reason.org/news/show/does-bus-transit-reduce-greenhouse
You can look up current numbers for Boston and other cities in the Federal Transit Database. Typically, buses average 9 passengers across all times and routes, not the 40 that you used, so the reality is much worse efficiency. Bus trips only look good during heavy commuting hours when load factors are high, otherwise people should drive their cars and buses should stop running! ;-) Boston buses in the 2000's had better fuel economy than the national average used in the referenced article. I had to dig into the detailed xls federal data for diesel gas used and bus miles driven per year
I have some of the Boston numbers
So let's just keep it to the Top-30 routes by ridership, together they account for 61% of all MBTA bus riders. The lowest of the low in terms of avg. pax per trip is the Dudley-SS jump, that averages only about 8 per trip (granted it's short, contiguous with the far-more travelled SL5 Dudley-DTX, has decent headways, and still registers as the 13th highest ridership route). Every other top-30 averages above 9, the lowest of that cohort is the 101 with 12 per trip - no doubt suffering from a lack-luster late schedule and higher than average peak headways. The average for the whole Top-30 crew is 29 pax per trip (30 if you throw out SL4). Of those, only two, the 71 and 73, can be said to be fully "clean" as they are TTs (which are switched out for Sunday schedules anyways).
Now to your point, the top-30 cohort only accounts for 142 of the 745 total route miles. They all generally have higher headways than your normal route, run one-way on average 4.7mile routes also below average, and are the busses you will see most frequently on the major roads. The MBTA should probably prune the edges of it's bus fleet, but these routes in particularly cannot go away at non-peak times - they are far, far too vital to the broader transit network as most are just feeders to rapid transit anyways.
If you have the Federal data on expended diesel please share, I have the data for total bus miles
Even if true, it's not as
Even if true, it's not as simple as "cut bus routes because the average car pollutes less than the average bus". What if the added cars would get stuck in and contribute to rush hour traffic? Or there's no place to park them? Or the people who ride those buses can't afford a car or are unable to drive?
You should stand at Back Bay
You should stand at Back Bay Station to get the Commuter Rail. You can't breathe and many times the whole area is in a haze. It's delicious!
I was once on a #350 bus
that was leaking so much exhaust into the _interior_ that I was getting a carbon monoxide headache*. I got the bus info, called the complaints line, and strongly suggested that they get that bus into the shop ASAP. I hope they actually did so. They did thank me.
(*for those of you that haven't had that pleasant experience, look up "carbon monoxide poisoning". It could save your life. Really.)
I was getting a carbon
No you weren't. If that headache were actually a symptom of CO poisoning (and not just from the exhaust odor or stress or something else), you'd have been on your way to the ER or the morgue at the end of that bus trip. See here.
If it was 12000 ppm, yes, you die.
But even a lot less than that is not good for you.
I'll bet you had a headache
I'm betting it wasn't CO, as diesel engines have very low CO emissions. That's why they are used in mines and other semi-enclosed operations.
Here's a blog by a guy who
Here's a blog by a guy who was persistent about getting the T to address exhaust leaks. It wasn't easy.
http://blog.kamens.us/tag/diesel-exhaust/
(No subject)
Hydrogen.... it powers the
Hydrogen.... it powers the Universe!
Would have the same problem
Would have the same problem the CNG buses do, that they are prohibited from going into any tunnels due to the explosion hazard.
you can ask the MBTA where
you can ask the MBTA where the hydrogen fuel cell bus that was supposed to go into service in the first quarter of 2015 is...
http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/environment/default.asp?id=26033
The T does have legitimate
The T does have legitimate reasons for using different kinds of buses in different areas, but it would be interesting to see if there are less legitimate reasons for any of this, e.g., low-income neighborhoods getting the crappier, older buses. A few legit reasons I can think of:
Some areas like Harvard Square and points further out on Mass. Ave. have electric buses that ride on catenary wires. These are obviously the cleanest buses, but you won't see them anywhere else unless the T builds out the electrified infrastructure.
The T has a fleet of CNG (natural gas) buses but they can't use them anywhere they need to go through tunnels. (Federal regulations regarding explosion hazards.) So these buses won't be used in Harvard Square because of the busway or if they need to go in the I-93/Callahan/Sumner/etc. tunnels.
The T may also have decided to use the crappier buses on shorter or less-frequent routes, in order to minimize the amount of pollution that these buses release.
CNG buses can't run in
CNG buses can't run in tunnels under 600 V DC electric wires (like the Harvard bus tunnel) because of the explosion potential, but they can run through ventilated roadway tunnels. Massport runs their CNG buses on their Back Bay shuttle route which operates through the Ted Williams Tunnel.
The entire Silver Line not
The entire Silver Line not being a trolleybus is a crime
Because Busses Are Always Too Few And Far Between?
The T Riders Union - ACE is on the case
And has been for quite some time. Look them up.
www.ace-ej.org/tru
Yes! Thanks to Alternatives
Yes! Thanks to Alternatives for Community and Environment's (ACE) Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Program (REEP), diesel emissions are to be controlled for City of Boston vehicles. It was just signed by Marty Walsh today: https://www.facebook.com/reep.ace/posts/10207037639569229?pnref=story
MBTA vehicles are covered under other programs, which I guess according to the OP, Marathon, still need work:
http://www.etest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/20091101_MBTA_ScoreCard-...
I have an honest question
What is your point?
I mean, all the buses the T drives through Roxbury have been switched to low emission CNG engines. The Bartlett Yard has been closed. Were it 1998, your statements woud be valid, but it's 2015. So, what is the point? Should the T cease running buses altogether? And if they did so, how would those who depend on them get to work or wherever?
I might be missing something, so I legitimately want to know what is up with your post.
They should fix or throw away
They should fix or throw away the subset of buses that stink up the place.