SPECIAL REPORT
School Bus Operations See Real-World Fuel Savings with Diesel – Yes, Diesel
By Michelle Fisher
Tat was before prices started coming down after Memorial Day. With fuel prices remaining volatile, school transportation profes-
I
sionals with the latest technology and related expertise contend that fuel consumption can be controlled — and reduced. “If you can measure something, you can control it. If you can con-
trol it, you can optimize it,” said Chris Oliver, vice president of sales and marketing at Zonar Systems, which recently added fuel as a fifth dimension measured by its GPS reporting system. “Two sets of people, bus dispatchers and drivers, need to know
how much fuel is being consumed,” he added. “When the vehicle is being operated, its idle, speed, RPM, engine load, rate of accel- eration and hard braking are all being measured.” Chief Technology Officer Mike McQuade said Zonar’s GPS-
based fuel tracking enables fleet managers to determine every bus’ fuel economy at specific points in the route. It also helps them to oversee driver behavior, which has a “huge” impact on fuel econo- my, he said, anywhere from a 5- to 33-percent differential. “We’re (excited) to help out all of our school district customers, like Las Vegas and Columbus (Ohio). Even small schools save hundreds of
t is human nature to desire control. When gas and diesel prices suddenly surge, we bristle because we cannot control it. Tis spring 84 percent of the 100-plus respondents to an STN Web Poll said fuel cost spikes have adversely affected their budgets.
thousands of dollars in fuel because of our technology,” McQuade said. Derek Graham, transportation services chief at the North
Carolina Department of Public Instruction, was instrumental in de- veloping another widely used tool that allows student transporters to easily calculate fuel usage and costs as well as the benefits of school busing for parents and others who drive students to and from school — the American School Bus Council’s (ASBC) online fuel calculator. Five years later, countless school bus operations na- tionwide rely on this calculator to track fuel expenditures. Graham has seen North Carolina school districts and communities realize “dramatic” fuel savings as a result of the calculator and other tools. How dramatic? ASBC’s website,
SchoolBusFacts.com, reports
that bus ridership saves an average of $421 in fuel costs per car each year, putting an additional $4 million per state back into family bud- gets. North Carolina’s savings amount to 67 million gallons of fuel annually — or $245 million at February 2012 price levels. Nationally, this translates into 2.3 billion gallons and $8 billion. “School districts have really felt the budget crunch, faced cuts
to transportation and had to grapple with that,” Graham said. “Te lion’s share of the transportation budget is directly related to routing, fuel and driver costs. So saving fuel by reducing routes also saves expenses on driver wages and such.”
REPORTING PROVIDES FUEL USAGE ‘SNAPSHOT’ David Anderson, transportation director of Adams 12 Five
Star Schools in Tornton, Colo., and chair of the Metropolitan Area Transportation Efficiency Study (MATES), has been helping other school districts implement key performance indicators, or KPIs, to improve efficiencies. “When we’re doing cost-per-mile comparisons (at MATES
meetings), we look at what others are doing to get extra miles per gallon. We try to help each other with big-picture stuff,” said An- derson, who is also an NAPT board member. “Almost every bus has preheaters — I can’t think of a district
that doesn’t have them. Tat’s made a big difference, helping with starting and warm-ups,” he said. Adams 12 operates 150 buses that use CCG Systems’ Faster fleet management software to track vehicles’ oil changes, mileage, engine
Each year, school buses nationally...
• Remove about 17.2 million cars off the road each morning and afternoon • Reduce traffic congestion • Save 2.3 billion gallons of fuel, $6 billion and 44.6 billion
pounds of CO2 • Decrease the dependence on foreign oil Source: American School Bus Council
38 School Transportation News Magazine July 2012
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