‘We can learn from them’: Transit professionals to gather in Philly for green bus conference

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Transit professionals from all over the country are in Philadelphia this week for a conference about lowering their planet-warming emissions.

SEPTA is hosting this year’s Zero Emissions Bus Conference in Center City Philadelphia. It’s the first time it’s been held on the East Coast, said Dan Raudebaugh, executive director of the Center for Transportation and the Environment, which runs the conference.

“California has for a long time been the leader in zero emission bus deployments,” Raudebaugh said. “But the industry has grown to the point where there’s a lot of activity going on in Philadelphia. There’s a lot of activity now going on in Washington, D.C. and in Chicago, so we wanted to move to the East Coast.”

The conference teaches transit professionals about the basics of battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses and how to roll them out.

Neither battery electric nor hydrogen fuel cell buses release planet-warming gasses from their tailpipes like traditional diesel buses do. But they can still contribute to climate change, depending on how the hydrogen or electricity that powers them is produced.

This year’s conference covers topics such as safety, gaining community support for adopting new vehicles and lessons learned during infrastructure projects.

Jon Diller sells batteries used in electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses at Forsee Power. He traveled to the conference from Ohio to learn what transit agencies are looking for as they move away from diesel buses. He said he’s seen an evolution.

“They’re no longer thinking of, ‘Am I going to transition?’” Diller said. “They’re thinking, ‘How am I going to transition in a way that I can sustain?’”

At the conference this week, SEPTA is showcasing parts of its own transition plan: infrastructure to support a hydrogen fuel cell bus pilot starting this fall, which some environmentalists have criticized; its fleet of electric trackless trolleys; and its battery electric bus charging stations, which the agency is adapting for its “second-generation” battery electric bus program. Several years ago, SEPTA sidelined 25 battery electric buses after they began cracking.

Troy Lundquist, a fleet services manager at the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority in Michigan who attended the conference, said he communicates with SEPTA officials about their experiences with new technologies and wanted to see the larger agency’s facilities in person.

The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority is currently planning a hydrogen fuel cell bus pilot similar to the one SEPTA plans to launch, he said.

“We can learn from them,” he said.