Electric buses cannot handle some tasks? Not even in Boulder?! "Free" transit may increase ridership, but research questions what, if anything, it does about pollution.
Wait just a minute here. Electric buses cannot handle some tasks and thus we must use !gasp! diesel?
Boulder Valley District (of all places! for shame!) recently ordered 5 new diesel buses, quoting the article linked below, "...because, 'diesel school buses are essential for mountain routes due to their robust performance in challenging terrains. These routes often have steep inclines, variable weather conditions, and remote locations, making diesel buses a practical choice.'"
Wait a minute. We still need fossil-fuel powered equipment?
And in Boulder no less?
What is this world coming to?
The reality here is that, outside of the glee at seeing sanctimonious Boulder buy fossil-fuel powered equipment, this isn't news.
The available alternatives to a whole slew of fossil-fuel powered equipment are not yet feasible for all situations. They're not an apples-to-apples swap. Even when they do get closer to that, we need to understand that what we'll be doing is swapping one set of problems for another.
Only a disingenuous politician (*cough* Polis *cough*) or wide-eyed-optimist environmentalist would think that a swap would go without problem or that it can happen quickly simply because you want it to.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/colorado/article_9fa3ae0e-727f-11ee-8309-9beca088170a.html
Related:
Colorado lost a bid to become a Federally recognized hydrogen hub (hydrogen seen by some as a good “bridge fuel” to replace fossil fuels that has no carbon emissions).
Few quick notes on that:
—We had better make a lot. Hydrogen is nowhere near as energy dense as, say, diesel.
—I am not so sure that modern technology could capitalize on hydrogen as well as other fuels. That is the tech is still a ways away. If you read the article in the post above, you’ll see that propane (a fuel between hydrogen and diesel in terms of its energy density) didn’t cut the mustard for the bus routes where diesel had to be the fuel of choice.
—Yep. The environmentalists are against hydrogen. You’ll see quotes in the article below. All or nothing, as I’ve written before.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/10/13/colorado-loses-federally-funded-regional-hydrogen-hub/
Taxpayer-subsidized transit may get more people on the bus, but it may not be doing anything to reduce pollution.
Let me start with a quote from the study linked first below:
"Our results reveal that measures aimed at reducing transit prices may fail to achieve the claimed environmental benefits through a modal shift from private to collective modes of transport, which therefore suggests that massive fare discounts may not represent an efficient allocation of public funds."
Starting in summer 2022 and then expanded for summer 2023, Colorado Democrats funded free transit rides (see the second link below) to encourage more people to use public transportation (reducing car trips and the associated pollution).
Did it work?
Well, you need to be careful in asking that question because it has multiple answers.
More people rode RTD (and you can probably make the same claim for other transit operations in other places). So, if "did it work?" means did more people ride, then it seems yes.
If "did it work?" means did it get more people to consistently use public transit, that 's a tougher question to answer and I have yet to see any writing about that.
If "did it work?" means did it reduce pollution, I, again, have yet to see anything specific to the Front Range (or CO in general), but there is some data from Spain that would at least cast doubt on whether or not free transit reduces pollution.
The study linked first below is by a group of Spanish economists and it looks into whether or not Spain's recent dip into free/discount transit fares (see screenshot 1 for the backstory) resulted in a drop in pollution.
The short answer is that, no, it didn't. Ridership seems to have gone up (at least compared to the dip that one could likely blame on COVID) as you can see in screenshot 2 attached. The researchers looked at monthly ridership in September over the years through September 2019 through 2022, with 9/22 being the free month (boxed in blue). As you can see the free rides in 2022 did spike ridership, albeit the spike is a local maximum and not a global one: the 2019 numbers are about even with the free months.
There is more data and sophisticated statistics in the report, but I think a few graphs pulled from the paper will give you a sense of what is (not) going on. Take a look at screenshots 3, 4, 5, and 6 attached. They are graphs showing concentrations of various pollutions (small particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ozone respectively) for the same months that ridership was sampled in the earlier graphs (Septembers from 2019 through 2022, the year of subsidized transit fares).
If there were a notable effect from more transit, we would expect to see some sort of correlation or pattern between date and pollution levels, but the graphs do not show this. Other than a mild dip due to COVID (look at the 9/20 data vs. other points), there is no appreciable change from 2019 vs. 2022. I would say the same holds for 2021 vs. 2022.
A more formal and sophisticated analysis shows at most a "...slim contribution to improving the air quality." (p 20) for one specific route of the Spanish transit network. One small possible improvement on one route with the others showing no real change.
Let's look at this study in context and remind ourselves of a few things. In other words, let's consider the boundaries of what this research can tell us and what it doesn't.
Spain is a different country than Colorado. The weather is different. The people are different. Hell, a careful look at the discounts and subsidies offered transit riders is different. This cannot help but limit the validity of this study and thus you cannot conclude that because it didn't work in Spain that it wouldn't here.
There are other caveats about the mechanics of the study (see for example paragraph 365 on p 16). The researchers did control for and try to adjust for factors that could throw off their measurements, but it should be remembered that no study of this kind is perfect and none is able to capture every detail.
I think it is reasonable to draw some conclusions from the paper, however.
First, the idea that discount or free fares for public transit as a way to increase ridership seems to work.
The idea that this increased ridership lessens vehicle trips, or that it lessens pollutions AT THE VERY LEAST requires skepticism and remains an open question.
In fact, I'd go further. My intuition tells me that the case is that it doesn't make a dent in lessening vehicle trips or pollution (the two would run together anyway).
I say this because of the discussion in screenshot 7. Translated from economics jargon to plain English, what the researchers are saying is that studies have shown that reduced prices do not greatly effect ridership on public transit and show almost no effect on car driver trips.
What then accounts for the increased ridership? Anyone's guess is as good as another's but the researchers did offer some thoughts. It could be to induced demand on transit (maybe you wouldn't bother making two trips to the store in a week if you had to pay for the bus, but if you can get on for free perhaps you'd nip over for a couple things on Wednesday and Sunday), and/or people shifting to transit from things BESIDES cars (why ride a bike when the bus is free?).
When we get to fund "free" bus rides in Colorado, we taxpayers should be getting more for our money than what our elected officials and media are offering us.
We should be getting a fair assessment of things, and that fair assessment would include a ton of doubt as to whether the goal of reducing vehicle trips and/or pollution is happening.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371947307_Free_rides_to_cleaner_air_Examining_the_impact_of_massive_public_transport_fare_discounts_on_air_quality
https://www.9news.com/article/travel/rtd-free-fares-july-august-2023/73-cff93e29-ccc2-458f-bdaa-d6027c099c52