“Te big issue, not just for fuel but also for safety,
is we don’t want them to drive their bus like they do their personal vehicle, with bad habits like jackrab- bits at the light when it turns green,” said Feinstein.
DIFFERENCES WITH ALT-FUEL BUSES?
Tough he oversees a much smaller fleet, Fein- stein also operates many CNG buses. He said he relies on driver training and the latest GPS tech- nology to steer his drivers away from inefficient and unsafe driving practices. “We talk to them about easing up on the accel-
erator. When stopping, they are supposed to look ahead and take their foot off the accelerator well ahead of the red light,” he explained. “We don’t train them differently on the CNG bus — we don’t want anyone to punch it.” McClain agreed there aren’t many differences in the way drivers handle alternative-fuel vehicles compared to those running on gas or diesel. “If you open the throttle and drive hard and fast, and stop hard and fast, you’re going to consume extra fuel. Smooth is always better,” McClain ad- vised. “It’s better for every kind of vehicle, including electric, because it will consume the battery charge.” One difference with CNG, Feinstein has found, is that the bus’ interior fuel gauge is not as precise as the one located on the fuel pump. Because of this, he has trained his drivers to monitor their daily fuel usage. “We have a form they fill out for their own edification with start and stop miles per day and where their fuel gauge is, so they can better judge whether they have enough fuel to make it without refueling,” he explained. “So our drivers know, once they complete this form over time, what their range is. It’s usually around 300 miles.” Keith Moore, director of transportation services at
Rowland (Calif.) Unified School District, about 24 miles east of L.A., has a fleet of 43 buses, including 15 fueled by CNG. Moore said these buses do not have a high mileage range, so drivers must be even more mindful of good habits such as proper shifting. “Tey do need to be in the proper gear within the city or if they are in a hilly or mountainous area. And they need to watch that gauge because the ones inside the buses are not as adequate as the gauge outside. So they need to check every morning to be sure they have enough fuel,” he continued, adding that improper shifting is hard on the transmission. “We go through skill levels in driver training,
teaching on shifting the bus and having it in proper gear based on the terrain and road conditions,” said Moore. “If they’re lugging their bus up a hill and it’s not in the proper gear, they are burning a lot of fuel and adding wear and tear on the engine.”
MONITORING RAISES AWARENESS
Alan Wilcox, supervisor of fleet maintenance at Denton ISD in Texas, sees a huge difference in
the way his younger bus drivers handle the vehicles compared to the retirees on the job. For instance, a college student may get 3.5 to 4 mpg on a route, while a senior driver will get 5 to 5.5 mpg in the same vehicle on the exact same route. Te majority of his fleet has gas engines converted to run on pro- pane autogas, and he said he does see a difference in how drivers operate the alt-fuel buses. “If you drive any propane or gas vehicle like you do a diesel, you’re going to burn a lot of fuel. You don’t have the lag time, so you don’t have to slam it to the floor to get moving. It needs a moderate acceleration,” Wilcox noted. Based on his extensive experience maintaining
vehicles, as well as the basic physics of wear, he said the harder that drivers push it, the more energy and friction they produce — and the more wear. “Te younger drivers push the buses, and we do see that it puts a lot more wear on buses,” said Wil- cox. “Older people put around, and some of their buses go 50,000 to 60,000 miles with very little brake wear. Tey are braking in 200 feet as opposed to 50 or 60.” Bryan M. Cruce, transportation supervisor with
Stafford Municipal SD, located southeast of Hous- ton, has a fairly new fleet (2008 or later) of large, conventional buses and recently implemented a GPS system to help him track driver behavior. Now, cameras are recording driver actions such as hand placement on the steering wheel and whether they keep their eyes on the road. “Te main thing I like about the system is that it
monitors the bus. If the alternator is about to go out, it sends me an alert,” Cruce said. “It tracks braking habits, monitors acceleration and deceleration and checks lights … It will probably take another year to see if we save money on maintenance with this new system.”
THE SUM OF ITS PARTS But Gary Ganaway, director of marketing
for Bendix Spicer Foundation Brake LLC, point- ed out that performance is just as important as cost savings when it comes to bus brake main- tenance and replacement. He also stressed that regular and preventative maintenance is “abso- lutely crucial” for safety and efficiency, including fuel efficiency, yet he noted that acceleration and driving speed impact fuel consump- tion more so than braking. “We see a lot of confusion from the fleet perspective about what consti- tutes acceptable replacement parts. Unfortunately, many municipalities are really challenged around funding for replacement parts. In many cases, they wind up purchasing these parts based more on cost than on perfor- mance, and with that there are some trade-offs,” Ganaway explained.
www.stnonline.com 55
Transportation head Bryan M. Cruce of Stafford (Texas) Municipal School District didn’t get the public feedback on driver habits that he wanted with “How am I driving?” stickers, so he recently had GPS installed in his fleet to get the whole story.
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