Time and time again, Ottawa’s public transportation system causes its users more frustration than necessary. And OC Transpo’s at it again. The latest fiasco to make headlines in the city concerns hybrid buses.
Recently, the city announced that it had made a mistake investing in its 170 hybrid buses, an initial investment of more than $600,000 for each bus, and will be moving to convert them back to diesel buses instead.
The problem with these hybrid buses, the city says, is that they are costing more money than they are actually saving.
The hybrid buses run on recharged electric batteries and were purchased in 2008 to save on fuel costs. Since then, these buses have cost the city $100,000 more than their diesel counterparts. In addition, they’ve contributed to an extra $1-million tab for the costs of diesel fuel and $7 million for replacing batteries. This extra cost is because the hybrids require frequent stops and breaks to recharge their batteries, and OC Transpo is mostly using them on long-distance routes, like from downtown to Kanata via transitway.
It makes sense, then, that the hybrids would end up costing more because they are not being utilized in routes that maximize their efficiency. The transitway that connects the downtown core to far-reaching places has fewer stops and requires longer times between stops, which makes it difficult for the buses to recharge on these routes.
To be fair, we cannot fault the current administration for this blunder – it was the previous administration that purchased the buses without calculating the real expenses for this system. There were several warnings about the hybrids before they were purchased, but the previous administration ignored these and went ahead with the experiment anyway. So it's no surprise that we see these problems surfacing now.
But the current administration is on the hook for figuring out how to solve this blunder, and they haven't come up with any effective solutions that would cost taxpayers the least amount of money.
Now, the city supposedly wants to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to convert these hybrid buses back to diesel. This makes no sense. Instead of spending more money, why not just switch the hybrid buses to routes that would be more efficient for them, and use diesel buses for longer routes?
This would allow the hybrids to do the job they were purchased for in the first place – save the city money and fuel. This simple solution seems to not have been considered by city officials – and it should be.
Ottawa likes its hybrid buses. They give the city a feel of being environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient. Scrapping the entire project without considering other alternatives to make it work is simply disappointing and does not have the cost-effectiveness that the city wants.
It’s true that hybrid buses have the potential to lower the costs of diesel and increase efficiency in the process, but that depends on how they’re used. We need to find a better use for them, and not just throw them away. We’ve spent enough money on this project already. Let’s figure out how to fix it without spending more.