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| This British-built Optare MetroCity
single-deck electric bus is one of six currently on trial in central London. |
KWAZULU-NATAL is a late-comer to rapid bus transport (BRT), but
work on eThewkini’s R22 billion BRT plan is going ahead and in Msunduzi
consultations are under way.
The track record of implementing BRT systems in other cities shows
it takes a lot of fuming before the chaotic, but effective, swarming system of
minibuses can be replaced by predictable, linear lanes, on which a bus runs
every 10 minutes.
While the operators debate, the vehicle suppliers are watching with
interest how world cities, in which rapid bus services are already in place, are
now moving away from internal combustion engines. The Edison Electric Institute
(EEI) has in June released a white paper, Transportation
Electrification: Utility Fleets Leading the Charge, which lists the
“quadruple win” for cities that do convert from “ice” (internal combustion
engines) to “evees” (electric vehicles).
CEO and president of Portland General Electric and co-chairs of the
EEI Electric Transportation Task Force, Jim Piro, said “plug-in cars and trucks
can make good business sense, whether you’re a utility or any other business
that operates a fleet of vehicles”.
The paper states electrification of transport fleets help to
support environmental goals, build customer satisfaction, reduce operating costs
and assure the future value of existing assets.
Chinese company BYD, (Build You Own Dream) is the unsung hero of
the electric bus lane. The company has sold thousands of their 12-metre buses
around the world. In China, two cities in March recently signed an total order
for 1 800 the BYD buses, which are already operating in cities in Canada, India,
North America, Malaysia and The Netherlands.
The blog cleantechina.com reports the Malaysian operator, Prasarana
Transit, gets over 400 km per charge from a single charge in a BYD buses.
London is not going the BYD route and is instead testing buses
custom-built for the city by Hinduja Group, a global company based in London.
Six electric, single-deck buses are currently on test as the first step in
London’s plan to have 300 electric buses operating in central London from 2020.
Over 1 000 of London’s older buses are also being retrofitted with selective
catalytic reductors that cuts harmful oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from the exhaust
by up to 88%.
Fiona Woolf, the lord mayor of London, said: “We are a world away
from the thick and filthy fogs of Victorian London — and even from the post-war
peasoupers, which in December 1952 alone caused the deaths of thousands of
Londoners and directly affected the health of 100 000 more. But we have a long
way to go before London’s air quality is at the levels we want to see.”
Back in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, the pall of smog hanging over
our cities will remain long after BRT plans have been put in place, unless our
BRT system also starts using electric motors.
