Just to be clear: I love school buses and pupil transportation. In fact, let me count the ways! (And I do get that the price of electric school buses is a tough nut to crack. More on that in a minute.)
Children riding a school bus in the U.S. are 70 times more likely to arrive at school uninjured than if they arrive via passenger vehicle. (I suspect the parents of the 50% of children who don’t ride the bus to school might not be aware of that.)
I see school bus drivers as highly skilled, unsung folk heroes, whose interpersonal gifts are in many cases responsible for retaining students and driving up attendance and graduation rates, especially among low-income and minority students.
School buses are the most productive vehicles in our nation as measured by passenger trips, more than twice that of public transit and rail combined. For oh, so many reasons, pupil transportation rocks.
So, when I mention the toxic effects of diesel exhaust, i.e., children that ride diesel school buses are 46 times more likely to get lung-related cancer, I’m advocating for a fuel change, ideally to electric. I’m never suggesting that students not ride the bus.
And electric buses are not the only way to reduce emissions and improve health outcomes. I like that Eugene School District 4 is running some renewable diesel, which is much cleaner burning than conventional diesel, and with lower maintenance costs. I respect that many Oregon districts run part of their fleets on propane, also cleaner burning, and blessedly more quiet than diesel. Electric drive-trains are the quietest. Quiet is a boon for hard-working bus drivers; we need all the retention tools for them we can find.
Electricity, though, is the cleanest and cheapest fuel. It’s also getting cleaner over time as solar and wind energy grow and coal is being phased out. So, how do we get past the high purchase cost of electric school buses (about 300k for electric vs 100k for diesel)?
How do we crack the money nut?
One way to crack the nut could be purchasing buses based on total cost of ownership (TCO). Twin Rivers Unified School District, featured in my last newsletter, reports their electric school buses cost .19 cents/mile to operate, compared to .82 cents/mile for diesel, with fuel costs alone reduced by 80%. Because Oregon’s average electricity costs are much lower than California’s, our fuel savings may be greater than theirs.
Such savings over the 12 year lifecycle of the bus can create a good TCO proposition, especially in combination with Oregon’s Clean Fuel Program credits, which have risen in value from $50 to $150 per credit (electricity earns the most credits of any fuel).
The TCO approach to purchasing is hard, simply because it’s new to us. Eyes tend to be riveted on this year’s budget. But Oregon SB 1044, which recently passed, encourages lifecycle cost analysis for state-funded vehicle purchases. Governor Brown wants Oregon’s transportation system to electrify.
Another nut-cracking idea is a new funding model for electric buses that levels the purchase cost down to that of diesel, via an on-bill tariff. You agree to pay to your utility, as an addition to your monthly electricity bill, a surcharge of no more than 80% of what you are saving on fuel. This distributes the cost of the electric bus over time. It’s called the Pay As You Save (PAYS) model. It’s won awards and is created by the nonprofit Clean Energy Works. There’s a lot to it. So, I plan to learn more about how PAYS may help us crack the tough money nut of electric school buses.
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.Whose land are you on?