Even allowing for the fact that I’m an extroverted electric bus geek, CTE’s International ZEB Conference September 26-27 in San Francisco is exciting by external measures. Top three reasons I am going and hope you will, too:
1.) A better conference on electric buses won’t be found.
The nonprofit Center For Transportation and the Environment (CTE) are the world experts in this field. See their project list here, beneath the map.
2.) Registration ($495 value) is free for transit agencies, two per agency. Register here (the transit discount appears at the end).
3.) An Oregonian is among the presenters at this international conference that includes speakers from London, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. Read on to learn who.
Why is electrifying our transit so important? We in Oregon aren’t meeting our climate goals. We’re not even coming close. The Oregon Global Warming Coalition reports that transportation emissions are a prime reason we’re not meeting our goals, specifically our ongoing use of diesel fuel. And both climate change and diesel exhaust, which is carcinogenic, hurt our most vulnerable communities the worst, even as those same people create the fewest emissions and have the least access to health care.
With our rich history of environmental stewardship, we Oregonians are the exact kind of people who can move from diesel to electric. Governor Brown and the state legislature have confidence in us. They prioritized the electrification of transportation with Executive Order 17-21, and backed that up by recently passing SB 1044, which supports it. And SB 1547, passed in 2016, requires our large utilities to assist in the electrification of transportation, which they are starting to do.
To that point, it is Joe Colett of Portland General Electric (PGE) who is speaking at the international ZEB conference next month. I got to work with Joe, a charging infrastructure expert, in my brief time at PGE — a brush with greatness!
In my last issue we saw that the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) board member Bill Bradley is on board with electrifying. His clarion call is that frontline workers need training, and aren’t yet finding it available.
Training at all levels is crucial. This week I asked three Oregon transit managers, each in different stages of electrifying their fleets, for their thoughts on the ZEB conference.
“Transit fleet electrification is like a snowball rolling down a hill, finding more speed with each revolution. The ZEB conference is an ideal vehicle for learning, sharing and fully immersed networking,” replied Dwight Brashear of SMART in Wilsonville Oregon. Dwight employed CTE’s expertise in putting his first two Proterra electric buses into service.
Scott Chancey of Josephine Community Transit in Grants Pass and Jeff Hazen of Sunset Empire Transportation District in Astoria added that “agencies looking at electrification should gather as much information as possible”. Scott expects to receive his first two electric buses from Complete Coachworks next month. He plans to use inductive wireless charging — a first in Oregon.
Given the state’s climate goals, is Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) supporting training around electrification, including attending CTE’s International ZEB Conference? Since the registration is free, I’ve inquired if ODOT could help transit agencies with travel expenses on a case by case basis. (ODOT did that last year when King County/Seattle held a workshop on electric buses.) I’m waiting to get an answer. I’m seeing round-trip airfares, as I write, of $242 for Eugene-San Francisco, same for Medford-San Francisco, and $161 for Portland-San Francisco. If anyone needs to spend a night in Portland to catch a cheap, early flight, my husband Thor and I can make our guest room available (we live 15 minutes from the airport). Register here for CTE’s ZEB conference in San Francisco September 26-27 (Thursday-Friday). No, I am not on CTE’s payroll :).
Any discussion of training around alternative fuels in Oregon should include Brian Trice. Correction to my earlier newsletter: Brian now works full-time at Clean Cities Coalition Willamette-Columbia and the Green Transportation Summit and Expo (GTSE), held every spring He is no longer at the Alternative Transportation Technology Center at Linn-Benton Community College; Bryan Schiedler now runs the alt fuels program there.
In my next issue, I’ll talk about my Dream Team panel on charging infrastructure and the crucial interface between transit agencies and utilities. This presentation may not be picked for the 2019 Oregon Public Transportation Conference. But I can also propose it for GTSE. Some people pick fantasy baseball teams. Geeks like me pick their dream conference panels.
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.
Whose land are you on?