City Tries To Fix Its eBus Cock-Up
The City of Ottawa and OC Transpo have finally stepped in to stop the ridiculous plans for $1-billion worth of questionably useful eBuses.
Now Ottawa is delaying purchases of its eBus fleet proposed by the most idealistic and unrealistic parts of council.
Arguably, the biggest problem with the environmentally friendly eBus fleet was that it wasn’t environmentally friendly. The Bulldog discovered that, due to a capacity problem at Hydro Ottawa, the fleet would have to be charged by two generators that could serve a city the size of Brockville. And those generators were powered by environmentally unfriendly natural gas.
Natural gas is a step up from diesel in that it creates about 20 per cent less greenhouse gas than diesel and fewer particulates. But realistically it’s a small gain.
So sure, eBuses run on electricity but that electricity is generated by greenhouse-causing natural gas. Rather takes the ‘e’ out of eBus.
However that equation was missed by too many simple minds on Ottawa City Council. They knee-jerked that eBus means clean energy. In Ottawa, it doesn’t. And unfortunately, many of the people on city council have the technical expertise that can successful run a toaster. You plug in the toaster and it toasts. And, the great fallacy, is that an unlimited amount of electricity is available to run everything. Not true.
The eBuses were bulldozed through committee and council in a fast and unseemly display of corrupted democracy. And in doing that, council didn’t do the homework required of a $1-billion project. Thus, in an astounding show of stupidity, councillors bought a fleet of eBuses that weren’t environmentally friendly.
Rarely are simple solutions simple or a solution. And city council in the eBus affair proved that once again. Council rushed the eBus deal before experts could even study the ramifications. Yes, the green part of city council knew better and study was a luxury they couldn’t afford in the midst of a climate crisis.
Just one problem. Council was wrong.
Eighty-nine people powered by one reliable diesel engine is most certainly a step up from using natural gas to power range-challenged eBuses. Then there’s the issue of reliability technically and in cold weather. The eBus solution couldn’t provide environmentally sound technology nor the range of diesel. A diesel engine is a small price to pay for getting 50 cars off the road. The eBus would only produce the same kind of rush to cars of electric light rail and would contribute to the continuous traffic jams on Highway 417. In short, the past and current blundering on light rail would have continued at a cost of $1 billion using challenged eBuses. EBuses, at present, are a bad alternative to diesel.
Ridiculous enough that city council has destroyed the transit system once in Ottawa through the light-rail disaster and slashing bus routes, council could have made it worse (if that is possible) by buying eBuses. Frightening.
So your agent has been hearing for some time that no progress was being made on building huge gas generators at OC Transpo for eBuses.
Now we know why.
Ken Gray
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
Ottawa had a truly unique and effective method of moving residents around the city which it chose to abandon, The Transitway. The following quote from wikipedia.org shines light on the history of this system. “The Transitway opened in 1983 with five stations. The network expanded greatly to include over fifty stations at its peak. In the 2010s, the central segment of the Transitway began reaching capacity, with buses bumper to bumper. To combat this, segments of the Transitway were closed in 2015 to allow conversion to a higher capacity light rail line, which opened in 2019 as the Confederation Line. More segments of the Transitway have been closed since construction began on Stage 2 of the O-Train expansion, and more will converted when Stage 3 begins. Ottawa’s Transitway has been seen as a prime example of bus rapid transit internationally, and has influenced the design and creation of other systems worldwide. The Ottawa Transitway has also been used as a model for how to design bus rapid transit, such as is the case for Brisbane, Australia and Mississauga, among others.” So Ottawa had pretty much nailed the use of buses as a method of mass transportation for a city of roughly 1,000,000 people. Instead of building on the success of the transitway by making the necessary adjustments to address its shortcomings the city decided it needed a sexier approach to its transit system (a system that would, as it turned out, win awards for artiness but would never function as intended). Although I don’t know the costs associated with the transitway I’ll bet the cost to alter a system that was doing its job effectively would have been much less than the multiple billions of dollars spent on the LRT which is still not doing what it was designed to and may never do without billions more dollars being poured into it (while ridership decreases). Why can’t Ottawa take pride in its successes rather than forge forward into unknown, unproven technology? We ain’t living in an episode of Star Trek and we can’t afford to build and maintain Starship Enterprise.
Another Watson legacy. Is there no mandatory process, oversight, and careful evaluation of billion dollar projects? After all, minimal thought was needed to arrive at The Bulldog’s conclusion. I’d like to know who was lobbying council members on this purchase and whether there was any untoward influence exerted.
eBuses also have a much heavier weight than diesel buses which is good in the winter for traction but not so good for roads as they significantly exceed the axle weight limits of roads and buses (eGarbage trucks are much, much worse and they may be coming). Also there is a $500M difference between the estimated infrastructure costs of Montreal and Ottawa for similar systems with Montreal spending $500M more for infrastructure. Wonder who is right?
Ken, there is no support for your headline in other published news. What’s your source for this? Published reports (CTVNews Oct 2nd) say that the bus manufacturers have delayed delivery. There is no plan to stop delivery and plans are for delivery to be on schedule, at least the 2027 major delivery and the 2036 total replacement.
“…
Gower said despite the delay at the end of this year, the plan to have 350 electric buses by 2027 remains on track.
‘It’s just a slight delay in terms of what we were expecting to get by the end of this year.'”
CTVNews, October 2nd, 2024
Sorry but I can’t support ANY of your arguments on this file. As someone says above “minimal thought was needed to arrive at the Bulldog’s conclusion.”
A question: what would 15 years of bus replacement and system expansion cost if they were stuck with diesel busses? I’ll be it would be close to $1B.
Jake
The weight issue that “C from Kanata” brought up is the only real one I see here. Let’s be sure the City is mandating increased strength in all new and refurbished trunk roads.
Jake:
Thank you for the input. My source calls the post “dead on”.
cheers
kgray
Ahhhh, gotta love those secret sources…
Low blow there Jake Bob. k