BlueGo fleet to be exclusively diesel powered
By Kathryn Reed
Soon Tahoe Transportation District’s fleet of BlueGo buses on the South Shore will all be diesel.
This is because the board this month voted to get rid of the compressed natural gas buses and the fueling station it operates at Lake Tahoe Airport.
“CNG has not been that great of a performer in mountain environments like ours, especially when you have hills to climb. When you combine that with where diesel technology has come, it is very clean and definitely more affordable and provides the power we need,” TTD Executive Director Carl Hasty told Lake Tahoe News.
It costs TTD about $72,000 to operate the station. They are responsible for nearly 98 percent of the usage. Other users have been notified it will be closing this summer.
TTD will also save money by not needing staff to maintain the facility or have parts for that fleet.
Placer County’s TART bus service uses CNG. Four of TTD’s CNG-fueled buses will go there.
“The TTD fleet includes 15 CNG powered buses. Buses 3281 and 3282 are currently not in service and were scheduled for disposal this year and buses 3283 and 3284 have exceeded their federal useful life and have CNG storage tanks that will expire in the next two years,” the staff report says. “The cost to replace CNG storage tanks is typically around $20,000 per bus. Another five CNG vehicles have exceeded their federal useful life and are also eligible for disposal. Of the remaining six CNG vehicles, buses 3274 and 3275 are specialized CNG-powered trolleys that will be retained for use on the West Shore. These buses will fuel at Placer County’s Cabin Creek CNG station. Placer County is interested in acquiring the other four CNG buses. These four buses have remaining federal interest and must be transferred to another grantee to avoid repaying FTA a prorated share of the federal interest.”
TTD added five buses to its fleet in May and will add another four in September.
The now defunct South Tahoe Area Transit Authority, which used to run BlueGo, began acquiring CNG buses about 13 years ago at a time when it was deemed this would be the more environmentally friendly route. That is not the case now. Hasty said TTD will keep looking at alternatives, but added electric vehicles won’t be purchased in the near future.
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Note:
- TTD staff will be giving a presentation to the South Lake Tahoe City Council on July 21 at 9am at Lake Tahoe Airport.
Why does such a small bus system have so many buses? Are they the seasonal Heavenly ski shuttles? There isn’t even bus service between the “Y” and Meyers.
Another green waste of money. Maybe the next buss fleet will be powered by unicorn piss and butterflies.
It was well known twenty years ago that CNG lacked power at high altitude and caused major ware on the engines compared to diesel.
I look forward to not being stuck behind one of the old buses on Kingsbury Grade.
To bad Tesla or another electric company couldn’t be part of a grant (or?) to test electric buses. Since Tahoe is kinda a terarium, possibly ideal situation for air quality testing with a huge, competent non fare public transit system.
Imagine the effect on tourism and low wage earners.
Perry,
Don’t be silly all we need is a worthless polluting ferry system. Just ask Carl WASTEY. Many more federal grants to tap in that area.
A Trans-Tahoe Zeppelin service would cut down on fine particulate pollutants.
I am so tired of the constant reference to Tesla as a world changing company, worthy of emulation and continued government support.
Tesla has not made a profit yet, and its huge battery plant in Reno is not new technology, just an attempt to build ’em cheaper.
Telsa is being supported on the backs of tax payers in the form of huge many year tax holidays, use of cheap loans and many other government backed incentives.
Elon Musk, the founder of all this, formed a commercial space company to more cheaply send junk into space to support the world’s space program, and hopefully create a rocket fleet to send people on short trips into space. How many people these days could afford the fare, and is it worth it to waste these kind of resources on the very wealthy?
SpaceX is having the same issues NASA and any other countries space programs experience.
Did they need an environmental study to evaluate the effects of continuing to dump rocket loads of god knows what into the Atlantic?
Tesla is not eco friendly. How long do you think their batteries last when tossed into landfills, not to mention the coal used to create them.
I have had contact with one of the Tesla dudes. He’s a whiny, self entitled little fool from the bay area wanting to plug in his little car and suck free electricity. If your ride can’t hold a charge to get you where you are going to and back……find another means. Hypocrite.
Only 2 electric vehicles I know of that go over 100 miles on a charge. One goes about 110 supposedly, Tesla claims over 400 miles on a charge. A lot of autos can’t even go 300 miles on a tank of fuel.
In 2013 Tesla turned a profit and employs 12,000 people. Go Silicon Valley, a source of domestic jobs.