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The secondary costs of running a diesel fleet are also huge! Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and

The secondary costs of running a diesel fleet are also huge! Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC121970/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC121970/ Even if an electric fleet is the same cost, changing over would save tons of money and alleviate tons of suffering. It's the right thing to do for any ethical reason you can consider. Unless, I suppose, you're intent on making the poor suffer. Diesel buses are very cost-effective at accomplishing that.

jjtheblunt 5y ago
(Disclaimer: have driven pure electric for going on 7.5 years) It may be more complex: electricity generation is very dirty in some regions, such as where coal is burned. Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty.
- sp332 5y ago
  It's much cleaner, even after accounting for losses in electricity transport and storage. Power plants are just much more efficient than mobile internal combustion engines.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Let's not forget the diesel emissions cheating scandal. Diesel engines are so amazingly difficult deal with from an emissions perspective that it's basically impossible to build one with an emissions system that doesn't require constant maintenance (filters, additives). Diesel emissions requirements for commercial vehicles are much more lenient for this reason.
- shiftpgdn 5y ago
  Yes because the coal burning is done at a central location with fairly advanced technology to capture dirty hydrocarbons. The tailpipe is spreading soot all over.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  No, it is not more dirty than diesel emissions. Coal plants are stationary, so they can install huge scrubbing apparatus. Diesels have to drag whatever cleanup mechanism they have installed with them, which is inherently limiting. Also, those coal plants aren't parked outside primary schools idling, and schoolkids aren't spending hours sitting around their smokestacks. Don't get me wrong: Coal is dirty as sin and radioactive as hell. Coal delenda est.
- kemiller 5y ago
  Engineering Explained did the math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM Spoiler: Well-to-wheels, BEV cars are better than the best gas cars (top end prius) even if the source electricity is 100% coal. The best is still not driving, but it's a step in the right direction.
  - mcv 5y ago
    Not driving would mean smaller schools closer to home, and infrastructure that allows kids to ride their bike to school. It's completely doable, but it does require people to care about more than just cars.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      It would significantly expand taxes, and that nearly always faces stiff opposition with voters. Especially when it is an open-ended increase.
      - thethethethe 5y ago
        > It would significantly expand taxes How exactly? Do you have any examples? Also, have you ever seen the price of car infrastructure? I would be willing to bet that denser walkable urban infrastructure projects are waaaaay cheaper than building and maintaining sprawling road, sewage, and power transmission networks. Sprawl is seriously draining the finances of many small cities and towns in the US. There's a whole book about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=strong+towns https://www.google.com/search?q=strong+towns You could also just watch this smug video https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0 https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0
        adamc 5y ago
        Yeah, but it's not terribly likely that you could stop maintaining the sprawl, because it's already there. Certainly not quickly.
- Ourgon 5y ago
  > Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty. When comparing old diesels to old coal power plants the power plants win by being more efficient but both belch out a lot of pollution. They also have the advantage of burning coal, a fuel which is available in abundance and does not need as much processing as crude oil does to be used in diesel engines. When comparing old diesels to modern coal power plants this is true at an even higher level since those modern power plants filter out fly ash and are more efficient. When comparing modern diesels to old coal-fired power plants the diesels win by being less polluting and possibly on terms of efficiency. Modern diesels versus modern coal power plants goes to the power plants again since these win on terms of efficiency - especially when using combined heat & power - over the diesels.
  - erosenbe0 5y ago
    I have found measuring in typical American neighborhoods that PM2.5 is raised the most when people burn wood for recreation or heat in the evening. It is much higher in the evening with a few neighborhood fire pits than during rush hour with a few diesel vehicles around. This is also when residents have asthma symptoms too. To be fair they are more likely to be home. So it is not cut and dry but if possible I would love to get rid of vehicle emissions as some particulate is too fine to measure.
    - stephen999 5y ago
      So what? You can try and clean up both. Particulate is not the only pollutant either. NOx and ozone are also emitted from diesel cars.
      - erosenbe0 5y ago
        Agree, just saying vehicle emissions are part of the picture and more work needs to be done on air quality.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  We can make power plants cleaner, and generally we do (but not nearly fast enough).
- philjohn 5y ago
  Electricity generation CAN be done cleanly, and should in the future continue to get greener. ICE cars will always give off pollution.
- zamalek 5y ago
  The thing is that we're going to burn coal no matter what.
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  downvotes to ask a question? what has HN become?
fiftyfifty 5y ago
Even in terms of primary cost, diesel buses are expensive to maintain. My FIL was a mechanic for the local school district for 15 years, so I got a little insight into that aspect of the district. Our medium sized school district, 4 big high schools and all the feeder schools for them, employs around 6 full time mechanics plus their manager with all the equipment and the facility to work on the buses year round plus parts etc. It's not difficult to imagine that cost alone adds at least $1 million to our district's budget annually. In addition they have to have some percentage of extra buses because they are constantly rotating buses out for maintenance. They also have to have at least one extra bus and driver on standby every day because diesel buses breakdown regularly during a route and they have to go out with a second bus and pick up the kids and finish the route. So if a district can outsource part of that maintenance cost, and electric buses prove to be lower maintenance and more reliable that their diesel counterparts, there are significant savings to be had for the school districts.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  > diesel buses breakdown regularly In comparison to what? Diesel engines in commercial vehicles are extremely reliable. It certainly could be possible for an electric bus to be more reliable, they certainly have less points of mechanical wear. However, there are a lot of power electronics going into charging their batteries and delivering the battery power to the motors.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    He probably lived through the "Maxfarce" era in which the Navistar MaxForce diesels that everyone and their brother ran proved to be less reliable than the International 7.3 IDIs they were replacing. To be clear, they weren't unreliable, they just had a tough act to follow.
  - WWLink 5y ago
    The diesel engines in the Thomas busses my school district had in the 90s would like to have a word with you. Those fuckers were always breaking down. lol. Plus they smelled like death and produced gross amounts of black smoke.
mtgx 5y ago
> Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children. This is one of the biggest issues with US' private healthcare system. The U.S. government just doesn't feel that direct "cost" in the same way countries that have to pay to fix the health of their citizens do. This is why you see a lot of other countries put higher taxes on sugar, gasoline, diesel, etc. Because they see a direct correlation between the consumption of those things and them having to invest more in their national healthcare system out of their tax money. Meanwhile, in the US, since it's the citizens that pay out of pocket, that money still goes into the economy, so it's kind of all the same to the government whether or not they get sick or not. They may notice some correlation in the long-term, but the negative effects of these things are not nearly as urgent to the government.
- DaltonCoffee 5y ago
  Canadian has free healthcare and still has diesel public/school buses
- Barrin92 5y ago
  Very true and also the reason for the exploding costs of the education system people complain about. In countries where universities run on public budgets you won't see exploding administrations and degree inflation because the state has a direct incentive to keep costs low rather than handing out loans that go to private institutions. Was honestly surprised when I saw that the rate of university graduation in the US is twice as high as it is here in Germany.
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    I guess if you're a year/two into a course in America you'd probably have $20,000 in debt to pay. If you have to pay it without graduating then you'd probably think you'd wasted the money - so you'd be likely to finish the degree to make sure you got "something" out of it. By contrast here in Finland education is free, so it's a lot easier for people to start courses, and if it didn't suit then drop out. Or move cities, and get a job. Where education is free I'd expect both more people to sign up to it, but also more people to drop out. Or take 10+ years to eventually get their degree whilst continuing to work.
asdff 5y ago
Do school districts still use diesel? CNG seems pretty popular these days.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Likely the CNG buses are purchased by wealthy districts and the less well off districts purchase the used diesel buses at a discount.
- luke2m 5y ago
  I'm in high school in the USA and am on multiple interscholastic sports teams, and am also interested in transportation. I have yet to see a single CNG school bus
- bluGill 5y ago
  For city buses. Schools are mostly diesel from what I've seen. You need special infrastructure to fill CNG, which limits trips.
hedora 5y ago
California's greatly surpasseed the misery of their old diesel fleets. In a bid to "reduce carbon emissions" (really: cut budgets in the way that screwed over parents as much as possible), they simply eliminated most school busses. Then, the state government claimed this reduced carbon emissions, ignoring the externalities associated with doubling most parents' commutes for 18+ years.
- ReaLNero 5y ago
  Stating the obvious here, but eliminating school buses and thus making people have to drive their kids to school would INCREASE carbon emissions. So the statement is both factually incorrect and a shameless attempt at misdirection.
  - linksnapzz 5y ago
    "Misleading and factually incorrect": the foundation of all public policy in CA.

jjtheblunt 5y ago

(Disclaimer: have driven pure electric for going on 7.5 years) It may be more complex: electricity generation is very dirty in some regions, such as where coal is burned. Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty.

sp332 5y ago
It's much cleaner, even after accounting for losses in electricity transport and storage. Power plants are just much more efficient than mobile internal combustion engines.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Let's not forget the diesel emissions cheating scandal. Diesel engines are so amazingly difficult deal with from an emissions perspective that it's basically impossible to build one with an emissions system that doesn't require constant maintenance (filters, additives). Diesel emissions requirements for commercial vehicles are much more lenient for this reason.
shiftpgdn 5y ago
Yes because the coal burning is done at a central location with fairly advanced technology to capture dirty hydrocarbons. The tailpipe is spreading soot all over.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MengerSponge 5y ago
No, it is not more dirty than diesel emissions. Coal plants are stationary, so they can install huge scrubbing apparatus. Diesels have to drag whatever cleanup mechanism they have installed with them, which is inherently limiting. Also, those coal plants aren't parked outside primary schools idling, and schoolkids aren't spending hours sitting around their smokestacks. Don't get me wrong: Coal is dirty as sin and radioactive as hell. Coal delenda est.
kemiller 5y ago
Engineering Explained did the math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM Spoiler: Well-to-wheels, BEV cars are better than the best gas cars (top end prius) even if the source electricity is 100% coal. The best is still not driving, but it's a step in the right direction.
- mcv 5y ago
  Not driving would mean smaller schools closer to home, and infrastructure that allows kids to ride their bike to school. It's completely doable, but it does require people to care about more than just cars.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    It would significantly expand taxes, and that nearly always faces stiff opposition with voters. Especially when it is an open-ended increase.
    - thethethethe 5y ago
      > It would significantly expand taxes How exactly? Do you have any examples? Also, have you ever seen the price of car infrastructure? I would be willing to bet that denser walkable urban infrastructure projects are waaaaay cheaper than building and maintaining sprawling road, sewage, and power transmission networks. Sprawl is seriously draining the finances of many small cities and towns in the US. There's a whole book about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=strong+towns https://www.google.com/search?q=strong+towns You could also just watch this smug video https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0 https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0
      - adamc 5y ago
        Yeah, but it's not terribly likely that you could stop maintaining the sprawl, because it's already there. Certainly not quickly.
Ourgon 5y ago
> Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty. When comparing old diesels to old coal power plants the power plants win by being more efficient but both belch out a lot of pollution. They also have the advantage of burning coal, a fuel which is available in abundance and does not need as much processing as crude oil does to be used in diesel engines. When comparing old diesels to modern coal power plants this is true at an even higher level since those modern power plants filter out fly ash and are more efficient. When comparing modern diesels to old coal-fired power plants the diesels win by being less polluting and possibly on terms of efficiency. Modern diesels versus modern coal power plants goes to the power plants again since these win on terms of efficiency - especially when using combined heat & power - over the diesels.
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  I have found measuring in typical American neighborhoods that PM2.5 is raised the most when people burn wood for recreation or heat in the evening. It is much higher in the evening with a few neighborhood fire pits than during rush hour with a few diesel vehicles around. This is also when residents have asthma symptoms too. To be fair they are more likely to be home. So it is not cut and dry but if possible I would love to get rid of vehicle emissions as some particulate is too fine to measure.
  - stephen999 5y ago
    So what? You can try and clean up both. Particulate is not the only pollutant either. NOx and ozone are also emitted from diesel cars.
    - erosenbe0 5y ago
      Agree, just saying vehicle emissions are part of the picture and more work needs to be done on air quality.
wolverine876 5y ago
We can make power plants cleaner, and generally we do (but not nearly fast enough).
philjohn 5y ago
Electricity generation CAN be done cleanly, and should in the future continue to get greener. ICE cars will always give off pollution.
zamalek 5y ago
The thing is that we're going to burn coal no matter what.
jjtheblunt 5y ago
downvotes to ask a question? what has HN become?

fiftyfifty 5y ago

Even in terms of primary cost, diesel buses are expensive to maintain. My FIL was a mechanic for the local school district for 15 years, so I got a little insight into that aspect of the district. Our medium sized school district, 4 big high schools and all the feeder schools for them, employs around 6 full time mechanics plus their manager with all the equipment and the facility to work on the buses year round plus parts etc. It's not difficult to imagine that cost alone adds at least $1 million to our district's budget annually. In addition they have to have some percentage of extra buses because they are constantly rotating buses out for maintenance. They also have to have at least one extra bus and driver on standby every day because diesel buses breakdown regularly during a route and they have to go out with a second bus and pick up the kids and finish the route. So if a district can outsource part of that maintenance cost, and electric buses prove to be lower maintenance and more reliable that their diesel counterparts, there are significant savings to be had for the school districts.

VBprogrammer 5y ago
> diesel buses breakdown regularly In comparison to what? Diesel engines in commercial vehicles are extremely reliable. It certainly could be possible for an electric bus to be more reliable, they certainly have less points of mechanical wear. However, there are a lot of power electronics going into charging their batteries and delivering the battery power to the motors.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  He probably lived through the "Maxfarce" era in which the Navistar MaxForce diesels that everyone and their brother ran proved to be less reliable than the International 7.3 IDIs they were replacing. To be clear, they weren't unreliable, they just had a tough act to follow.
- WWLink 5y ago
  The diesel engines in the Thomas busses my school district had in the 90s would like to have a word with you. Those fuckers were always breaking down. lol. Plus they smelled like death and produced gross amounts of black smoke.

mtgx 5y ago

> Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children. This is one of the biggest issues with US' private healthcare system. The U.S. government just doesn't feel that direct "cost" in the same way countries that have to pay to fix the health of their citizens do. This is why you see a lot of other countries put higher taxes on sugar, gasoline, diesel, etc. Because they see a direct correlation between the consumption of those things and them having to invest more in their national healthcare system out of their tax money. Meanwhile, in the US, since it's the citizens that pay out of pocket, that money still goes into the economy, so it's kind of all the same to the government whether or not they get sick or not. They may notice some correlation in the long-term, but the negative effects of these things are not nearly as urgent to the government.

DaltonCoffee 5y ago
Canadian has free healthcare and still has diesel public/school buses
Barrin92 5y ago
Very true and also the reason for the exploding costs of the education system people complain about. In countries where universities run on public budgets you won't see exploding administrations and degree inflation because the state has a direct incentive to keep costs low rather than handing out loans that go to private institutions. Was honestly surprised when I saw that the rate of university graduation in the US is twice as high as it is here in Germany.
- stevekemp 5y ago
  I guess if you're a year/two into a course in America you'd probably have $20,000 in debt to pay. If you have to pay it without graduating then you'd probably think you'd wasted the money - so you'd be likely to finish the degree to make sure you got "something" out of it. By contrast here in Finland education is free, so it's a lot easier for people to start courses, and if it didn't suit then drop out. Or move cities, and get a job. Where education is free I'd expect both more people to sign up to it, but also more people to drop out. Or take 10+ years to eventually get their degree whilst continuing to work.

asdff 5y ago

Do school districts still use diesel? CNG seems pretty popular these days.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Likely the CNG buses are purchased by wealthy districts and the less well off districts purchase the used diesel buses at a discount.
luke2m 5y ago
I'm in high school in the USA and am on multiple interscholastic sports teams, and am also interested in transportation. I have yet to see a single CNG school bus
bluGill 5y ago
For city buses. Schools are mostly diesel from what I've seen. You need special infrastructure to fill CNG, which limits trips.

hedora 5y ago

California's greatly surpasseed the misery of their old diesel fleets. In a bid to "reduce carbon emissions" (really: cut budgets in the way that screwed over parents as much as possible), they simply eliminated most school busses. Then, the state government claimed this reduced carbon emissions, ignoring the externalities associated with doubling most parents' commutes for 18+ years.

ReaLNero 5y ago
Stating the obvious here, but eliminating school buses and thus making people have to drive their kids to school would INCREASE carbon emissions. So the statement is both factually incorrect and a shameless attempt at misdirection.
- linksnapzz 5y ago
  "Misleading and factually incorrect": the foundation of all public policy in CA.