No decision expected until February
We measure the effectiveness of local government by determining how much progress is being made toward goals, goals adopted by elected officials. Charlottesville City Council adopted a moral directive to eliminate its use of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to reduce existing emissions by 2030.
Late last year, City Manager Sam Sanders elevated the Office of Sustainability from Public Works to be its own independent entity underneath his close watch. But perhaps one of the most high-profile discussion points about climate change and adaptation in this community relates to the fuel type for mass transit vehicles.
On Monday, January 22, 2024, Council finally heard the final report in a feasibility study commissioned by Charlottesville Area Transit to review the many options to inform Council’s eventual decision on how to proceed to meet the city’s overall climate goals.
“It’s been about almost 18 months now since we started down this path of putting together the alternative fuel study,” said Garland Williams, director of Charlottesville Area Transit.
Council last got an update on the study in July. To set the stage, Williams told Council on Monday that the study assumes the need to run 15 routes with 26 vehicles active during peak periods to provide enough capacity.
“The schedules that we’re talking about are for operating about 14 hours of 15 hours per day, so the recommendation that we’re going to introduce to you basically looks at getting us a model that allows us to be reliable, dependable and frequent because those are the things that make transit usable for all in this area,” Williams said.
Sam Sink is with Kimley Horn and said the study is intended to determine a preferred fuel type and to recommend a strategy and timeline for implementation. That involves considering resources available for the transition, what it would be like to operate a fleet under the new fuel source, and what sustainability benefits would result. (review the presentation)
The study reviewed three alternatives.
“First was natural gas, [which] can be either CNG (compressed natural gas) or RNG (renewable natural gas),” Sink said. “We also looked at battery-electric buses and fuel cell electric bus, also known as hydrogen.”
Sink went through the pros and cons of each type and said both types of electric vehicles would require new charging infrastructure. Natural gas vehicles would produce fewer emissions than diesel buses, but not zero.
“CNG or RNG, it is a cost-effective technology,” Sink said. “It’s also a very mature technology as there’s many agencies around the state that are using this and around the region. It’s very resilient to operate. If your power goes down, you can still fuel your buses with CNG or RNG.”
Sink said battery-electric vehicles are also a mature technology and there are zero tailpipe emissions, though it should be noted that the electricity used to charge vehicles comes from somewhere.
“There’s a definitive source of the fuel,” Sink said. “You know what your grid make-up is, and where that electricity is coming from and whether its renewable or not. You know the ultimate emissions story behind that fuel that’s being used to charge your batteries. On the con side, it may require a larger fleet. These buses do have a higher cost than diesel or CNG buses and there are range concerns and that’s kind of what drives that requirement for a larger fleet.”
Hydrogen fuel cells would also be zero-tailpipe emissions and could be operated if the power is out. However, they’re more expensive to implement.
“Also, there’s somewhat of a lack of supply of hydrogen fuel on the market right now,” Sink said. “This is more of an emerging technology so the fuel market hasn’t quite caught up.”
Williams said CAT can buy a diesel vehicle for $548,000 and the city’s cost-share responsibility for that is four percent. The city-run agency will be seeking to try out one of the alternatives in the near future but they are more expensive.
“We will be able to put within the next 60 days an order for two battery-electric vehicles,” Williams said. “When we made our submission to the state they pointed out that they thought our estimate was low so they bumped our number up. It’s basically $1.2 million per vehicle.”
This the first chance for Councilor Natalie Oschrin to ask questions about the make-up of the transit fleet. A new elected official brings fresh eyes to existing systems. Oschrin first asked if the model being used assumed replacement of large buses or if smaller vehicles could be used.
“We’re an urban style system and part of what we are trying to do is capacity,” Williams said. “To go to smaller vehicles, we don’t have the capacity to carry as many people so we would potentially have to double the size of the fleet and have them on a much higher frequency to carry as many people but right now we are 35 footers that allow us to carry 55 people seated and about another 15 to 20 standing.”
“And how, and this might be veering a little from this presentation but is ridership capacity full?” Oschrin asked.
“It depends on which route you are asking,” Williams said. “There are three routes in our system that are at capacity and having smaller vehicles would be a concern for us. Now, I caveat that because the frequency on the other routes is not where we want it to be so the ridership is not where we are hoping that it will be. If we can get it becoming more reliable and frequent, we know our ridership. There’s pent-up demand.”
Williams said there are three vehicles serving Route 5 and Route 7 during peak period.
The most recently available ridership report on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s website is from 2022 for CAT with a reported 1,156,514 unlinked trips. In 2013, CAT reported ridership of 2,405,151, a marked decline over nine years. The pandemic can’t be fully blamed for the decrease as the 2019 report showed 1,871,952 unlinked trips.
Another consideration for buses is the need to provide heat for passengers on buses during winter months. Another is the possibility of fast-charging technology for battery electric vehicles.
Sink said one of the study’s recommendations is to commit to CAT becoming emissions free by 2040, ten years ahead of the city’s larger goal. Here’s another.
“CAT should pilot two fuel types for transition, both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell,” Sink said.
Sink reminded Council that Williams had said procurement is already underway for two battery-electric vehicles.
“The other piece of this carbon neutrality is getting more people on the bus and those investments represent an almost doubling of CAT’s service that they have on the street today,” Sink said.
It is important to mention at this point that expansion has nothing to do with the theoretical Regional Transit Vision Plan that’s been put together by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. The CAT expansion was last reviewed by Council in May 2021 but has not been implemented. (read my story) (link to 11-30-22 vision plan)
Right now there are 40 buses and Williams said 58 are needed to allow for the expansion scheme to take place. Kimley Horn is working on a space study for that increase as well as for different fuel types. He said CAT will need to acquire land next to the existing fleet depot on Avon Street Extended in order to build a facility that could handle both recharging for both battery electric and hydrogen vehicles.
The pilot vehicles would be rotated throughout all of the routes, including the ones with challenging topography, to test their reliability.
“One of the things we’re going to do is buy an extended warranty,” William said.
“You got that phone call, too?” quipped City Councilor Lloyd Snook.
Williams said his preference is to proceed with multiple fuel types as technology changes.
“Part of the reason why we are looking at potentially doing two pilots is to make sure we get the mix of alternative fuel vehicles correct,” Williams said. “I have concerns about putting all of our eggs in one basket.
City Councilor Brian Pinkston said he could understand that, but was concerned about proceeding with a hydrogen pilot given that the technology isn’t so far along.
“We have an administration now that is pushing but we might not have an administration that’s going to be as forward thinking,” Pinkston said. “I don’t know, I can’t predict the future.”
Pinkston suggested concentrating on battery electric vehicles and pursuing the fast-charging technologies that might increase their capacity. Williams said he was concerned about securing locations for those sites along routes.
City Councilor Michael Payne was also skeptical of hydrogen given the unknowns about sourcing the fuel and whether its production itself is emissions-free.
Mayor Juandiego Wade said he is not a bus rider, but many of the people he works with as a career advisor depend on transit to get to work.
“They want the frequency,” Wade said. “They’re not saying they necessarily want them cleaner. I’m not saying that they don’t but a lot of people want it cleaner, they don’t necessarily use the transit. And I’m making a general statement.”
Williams said the system does not currently have the reliability it needs to sustain ridership, let alone provide more trips.
“We have a system where we have 40 vehicles on our property,” Williams said. “Today I only had access to 20 of them. Ten of them were the hybrid battery-electric vehicles. They have been down. They don’t work. They stay in our shop more than they are on the road.”
Council was not specifically asked to provide input but instead to just receive the information to see if there were no major objections.
City Manager Sam Sanders said Council needed time to think about the matter and to come up with additional questions before seeking a decision in February.
“I’m sure you will hear from our advocates who have interest in making some different decisions so that you will be able to have that information as well and my desire was to have come back into another work session more like what you did during the zoning ordinance back in CitySpace,” Sanders said.
And sure enough, the public comment period was filled with people seeking to influence Council’s decision. Charles McCurdy of the Fry’s Spring neighborhood is a member of the group IMPACT which has been working to study potential improvement for bus service. He said he’d been told that a lack of drivers is why some scheduled services aren’t working.
“We think that CAT drivers deserve to be paid comparable to what Richmond’s GRTC’s system pays its drivers in greater Richmond,” McCurdy said.
City resident Robert McAdams pushed for quicker action on a shift to battery electric vehicles.
“Battery powered vehicles are a proven technology,” McAdams said. “The purpose of a pilot study for Charlottesville can only be to identify local problems that need to be addressed before beginning a broad transition to these buses.”
Other speakers called for fair wages for transit workers, who are now engaged in collective bargaining. Greg Weaver of the Charlotteville chapter of Democratic Socialists of America critiqued the third-party attorney hired by the city to handle the negotiations.
“CAT workers and their union representation have made public statements attesting to the outside attorney that the city hired has been acting adversarially and cynically during the bargaining process,” Weaver said.
Weaver said DSA demands changes that improve bus drivers’ lives, which would improve the reliability of the overall system.
Lisa Glassco urged the city to not buy any more diesel buses and to make the shift now to battery-electric vehicles even with potential risks.
“Many companies are working on making safer, cheaper, and easier batteries at this time,” Glassco said. “That doesn’t have to slow down the transition.”
Several paid and unpaid members of advocacy groups also made comments. More on this topic and transit as Charlottesville Community Engagement continues.
Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the January 23, 2024 edition of the newsletter and podcast. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.
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