CNG has a foothold in certain areas, but adopters caution that the fuel can be expensive to implement into a fleet and the bus fuel tanks need to be replaced after 15 years.
in 47 states ride a propane autogas bus to school. PERC said more than 12,000 propane autogas school buses were operating in public and private school districts in the U.S. at the start of this school year. A trend within the trend is that most of those districts who use alternative fuels prefer propane. Te leading fuel of choice overall, however, overwhelmingly remains diesel. Te results of a recent mag- azine survey indicates as much. With 170 responses, 132 districts or nearly 78 percent said they do not currently use alternative fuel bus- es, while 38 districts or slightly more than 22 percent said they do. Two-thirds of readers who said they use alternative fuel buses
listed propane as their alternative fuel of choice, with 27 percent preferring CNG. A smattering of districts reported using both propane and CNG. Another 5 percent use electric buses, an alternative that is pro- jected to start becoming a viable choice nationwide a decade from now. New York State is attempting to accelerate that timeline as it recently added Type-A electric buses to the state bid.
PROPANE: THE TREND WITHIN THE TREND Te Kyrene School District, which straddles parts of Phoenix,
Cecere and Kennedy met with their local Blue Bird dealer and first began comparing alt-fuel options. Tey pored over pages and pages of information and the pros and cons of different fuel types. “It was a combination of factors that made us choose pro- pane,” she said. “Propane sounded like the most affordable and environmentally safe and clean way to run our buses.“ Kennedy said he has a strong preference for propane buses because of their performance on the road. “Tere is less lag in ac- celeration than diesel and they run quieter,” he said. “Tey warm up really quick during the winter and there is no excessive heat by the drivers feet with propane.” Kennedy added that KIPP is already saving money via lower fuel and maintenance costs and has a propane tank onsite where drivers are trained to refuel their buses. Te district began with two buses in 2010 and has added two or three buses each year since. KIPP Jacksonville is indicative of a movement that is slowly gaining momentum nationwide, fueled by federal and state grants to offset the incremental purchase price of new buses that boast not only lower emissions than that of traditional diesel but also reduced maintenance requirement. Research recently released by the Propane Education and Re- search Council (PERC) claims that more than 700,000 students
34 School Transportation News • APRIL 2017
Tempe and Chandler, Arizona, is a prime example of national embrace of propane. Transportation Director Eric Nethercutt said 110 of the district’s 130 buses are propane. Te rest are diesel. He said the change was by design to replace an aging diesel fleet. “I’ve converted almost our entire bus fleet to propane and we did it for multiple reasons,” he explained. “At the time, we want- ed to upgrade our fleet we looked at rising diesel prices plus the cost of cleaning up the emissions. We wanted to look at some- thing other than diesel.” Nethercutt said the district compared CNG and propane and determined that the former was too expensive to implement. “When we began the process, the price of propane was about a dollar less a gallon than diesel and it was considered a clean fuel by the federal government, so its storage was not regulated like diesel,” Nethercutt explained. “It also reduced our carbon footprint.” Nethercutt added that the district is paying about 79 cents a gallon for propane, about a dollar less than diesel. “Plus, the feds give us a 36-cent per gallon rebate as an incentive to use clean fuel,” he said. “Tat puts us at about 43 cents per gallon, and that’s hard to pass up.” Nethercutt estimated that the district buses travel about 1.4 million miles per year. Propane-fueled school buses are also making a comeback in
South Carolina. Te South Carolina Department of Education recently purchased 26 Blue Bird Propane Visions for two local districts, the first such school buses in the state since the 1980s. “We felt that we needed to perform a pilot on alternative fuels
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