scholarly journals Costs and Benefits of Electrifying and Automating Bus Transit Fleets

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 3977 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Quarles ◽  
Kara M. Kockelman ◽  
Moataz Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
Respiratory Health ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Charging Infrastructure ◽  
Fuel Prices ◽  
Bus Transit ◽  
Electric Bus ◽  
Transit Agencies ◽  
Cost Parameters ◽  
Fleet Operations ◽  
Current Operating

Diesel-powered, human-driven buses currently dominate public transit options in most U.S. cities, yet they produce health, environmental, and cost concerns. Emerging technologies may improve fleet operations by cost-effectively reducing emissions. This study analyzes both battery-electric buses and self-driving (autonomous) buses from both cost and qualitative perspectives, using the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s bus fleet in Austin, Texas. The study predicts battery-electric buses, including the required charging infrastructure, will become lifecycle cost-competitive in or before the year 2030 at existing U.S. fuel prices ($2.00/gallon), with the specific year depending on the actual rate of cost decline and the diesel bus purchase prices. Rising diesel prices would result in immediate cost savings before reaching $3.30 per gallon. Self-driving buses will reduce or eliminate the need for human drivers, one of the highest current operating costs of transit agencies. Finally, this study develops adoption schedules for these technologies. Recognizing bus lifespans and driver contracts, and assuming battery-electric bus adoption beginning in year-2020, cumulative break-even (neglecting extrinsic benefits, such as respiratory health) occurs somewhere between 2030 and 2037 depending on the rate of battery cost decline and diesel-bus purchase prices. This range changes to 2028 if self-driving technology is available for simultaneous adoption on new electric bus purchases beginning in 2020. The results inform fleet operators and manufacturers of the budgetary implications of converting a bus fleet to electric power, and what cost parameters allow electric buses to provide budgetary benefits over their diesel counterparts.

scholarly journals Estimating Cost Savings of Coordinating Regional Non-Emergency Human Transport Services

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryoichi Sakano ◽  
Julian Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Operating Cost ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Transportation Systems ◽  
Transportation Services ◽  
Transport Services ◽  
Transportation Agencies ◽  
Human Transport ◽  
Current Operating

Local public transportation agencies provide a nonemergency human transport service to nearby hospitals and doctors' offices. Some users require specialized medical services at a hospital located out of the normal service area. In the Piedmont/Triad region of North Carolina, the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART) began PART Connections in April 2004, to provide two daily transportation services between the Piedmont/Triad area and the UNC/Duke medical areas. Using current operating cost data of participating transportation systems, round-trip costs to the UNC/Duke medical areas from each county and to the nearest PART Connections stop are estimated. Given the actual number of passengers served by PART Connections during the first nine-month period of the service, the net saving in the operating cost by participating PART Connections is estimated for each system. Then, the total service hours saved by using PART Connections are estimated for each system, and are used to estimate the number of additional passengers served within the system. It is estimated that PART Connections could provide a net saving of $38,000 on operation expenses annually to the participating four county transportation systems. More importantly, PART Connections would enable the four county systems to provide more than 10,000 additional passenger trips within each county annually, by using the saved resources. In addition, 12 local community transportation providers in 15 western counties of the Piedmont/Triad region, which currently do not participate in PART Connections, are estimated to save a modest $9,600 in total annually, by using PART Connections.

scholarly journals Energy Consumption Optimization Model of Multi-Type Bus Operating Organization Based on Time-Space Network

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (16) ◽  
pp. 3352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuhuan Liu ◽  
Enjian Yao ◽  
Shasha Liu
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Time Window ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Energy Structure ◽  
Charging Infrastructure ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Electric Bus ◽  
Energy Consumption Optimization ◽  
Operating Organization

As a new type of green bus, the pure electric bus has obvious advantages in energy consumption and emission reduction compared with the traditional fuel bus. However, the pure electric bus has a mileage range constraint and the amount of charging infrastructure cannot meet the demand, which makes the scheduling of the electric bus driving plans more complicated. Meanwhile, many routes are operated with mixing pure electric buses and traditional fuel buses. As mentioned above, we focus on the operating organization problem with the multi-type bus (pure electric buses and traditional fuel buses), aiming to provide guidance for future application of electric buses. We take minimizing the energy consumption of vehicles, the waiting and traveling time of passengers as the objectives, while considering the constraints of vehicle full load limitation, minimal departure interval, mileage range and charging time window. The energy consumption based multi-type bus operating organization model was formulated, along with the heuristic algorithm to solve it. Then, a case study in Beijing was performed. The results showed that, the optimal mixing ratio of electric bus and fuel bus vary according to the variation of passenger flow. In general, each fuel bus could be replaced by two pure electric buses. Moreover, in the transition process of energy structure in public transport, the vehicle scale keeps increasing. The parking yard capacity and the amount of charging facilities are supposed to be further expanded.

scholarly journals Resilient Schedule Coordination for a Bus Transit Corridor

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Xiongfei Lai ◽  
Jing Teng ◽  
Paul Schonfeld ◽  
Lu Ling
Keyword(s):  
Bus Transit ◽  
Schedule Coordination ◽  
Operating Environments ◽  
Transit Services ◽  
Passenger Flows ◽  
Transit Agencies ◽  
Transfer Stations ◽  
Link Travel Time ◽  
Bus Schedule ◽  
In Transit

Providing convenient transit services at reasonable cost is important for transit agencies. Timed transfers that schedule vehicles from various routes to arrive at some transfer stations simultaneously (or nearly so) can significantly reduce wait times in transit networks, while stochastic passenger flows and complex operating environments may reduce this improvement. Although transit priority methods have been applied in some high-density cities, operating delays may cause priority failures. This paper proposes a resilient schedule coordination method for a bus transit corridor, which analyzes link travel time, passenger loading delay, and priority signal intersection delay. It maximizes resilience based on realistic passenger flow volume, whether or not transit priority is provided. The data accuracy and result validity are improved with automatically collected data from multiple bus routes in a corridor. The Yan’an Road transit corridor in Shanghai is used as a case study. The results show that the proposed method can increase the system resilience by balancing operation cost and passenger-based cost. It also provides a guideline for realistic bus schedule coordination.

scholarly journals Analysis of Battery Reduction for an Improved Opportunistic Wireless-Charged Electric Bus

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 2866
Author(s):  
Andong Yin ◽  
Shenchun Wu ◽  
Weihan Li ◽  
Jinfang Hu
Keyword(s):  
Cost Saving ◽  
Electric Vehicles ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Wireless Charging ◽  
Charging Infrastructure ◽  
The Road ◽  
Charging System ◽  
Electric Bus ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Operation Cost

As an attractive alternative to the traditional plug-in charged electric vehicles (EVs), wireless-charged EVs have recently been in the spotlight. Opportunistically charged utilizing the wireless-charging infrastructure installed under the road at bus stops, an electric bus can have a smaller and lighter battery pack. In this paper, an improved opportunistic wireless-charging system (OWCS) for electric bus is introduced, which includes the opportunistic stationary wireless-charging system (OSWCS) and opportunistic hybrid wireless-charging system (OHWCS) consisting of stationary wireless-charging and dynamic wireless-charging. A general battery reduction model is established for the opportunistic wireless-charged electric bus (OWCEB). Two different battery-reduction models are built separately for OWCEB on account of the characteristics of OSWCS and OHWCS. Additionally, the cost saving models including the production cost saving, the operation cost saving and total cost saving are established. Then, the mathematical models are demonstrated with a numerical example intuitively. Furthermore, we analyze several parameters that influence the effectiveness of battery reduction due to the application of an opportunistic wireless-charging system on an electric bus. Finally, some points worth discussing in this work are performed.

scholarly journals Developing a dynamic optimization model for electric bus charging infrastructure

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 776-783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Xylia ◽  
Sylvain Leduc ◽  
Piera Patrizio ◽  
Semida Silveira ◽  
Florian Kraxner
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Optimization ◽  
Optimization Model ◽  
Charging Infrastructure ◽  
Electric Bus ◽  
Dynamic Optimization Model

scholarly journals Implementation Schemes for Electric Bus Fleets at Depots with Optimized Energy Procurements in Virtual Power Plant Operations

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Raab ◽  
Enrico Lauth ◽  
Kai Strunz ◽  
Dietmar Göhlich
Keyword(s):  
Power Plant ◽  
Virtual Power ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Charging Infrastructure ◽  
Virtual Power Plant ◽  
Electric Bus ◽  
Market Operation ◽  
Plant Operations ◽  
Physical Layout ◽  
Intraday Market

For the purpose of utilizing electric bus fleets in metropolitan areas and with regard to providing active energy management at depots, a profound understanding of the transactions between the market entities involved in the charging process is given. The paper examines sophisticated charging strategies with energy procurements in joint market operation. Here, operation procedures and characteristics of a depot including the physical layout and utilization of appropriate charging infrastructure are investigated. A comprehensive model framework for a virtual power plant (VPP) is formulated and developed to integrate electric bus fleets in the power plant portfolio, enabling the provision of power system services. The proposed methodology is verified in numerical analysis by providing optimized dispatch schedules in day-ahead and intraday market operations.

Electric bus scheduling under single depot dynamic wireless charging infrastructure planning

Energy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 213 ◽  
pp. 118855
Author(s):  
Yaseen Alwesabi ◽  
Yong Wang ◽  
Raul Avalos ◽  
Zhaocai Liu
Keyword(s):  
Wireless Charging ◽  
Infrastructure Planning ◽  
Charging Infrastructure ◽  
Bus Scheduling ◽  
Electric Bus

scholarly journals Charging Schedule for Load Peak Minimization on Large-Scale Electric Bus Depots

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amra Jahic ◽  
Mina Eskander ◽  
Detlef Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Peak Load ◽  
Load Profile ◽  
Charging Infrastructure ◽  
Scheduling System ◽  
Electric Bus ◽  
Local Grid ◽  
Load Peak ◽  
The City

The city of Hamburg has decided to electrify its bus fleets. The two public transportation companies in this city expect to operate up to 1500 buses by 2030. In order to accomplish this ambitious goal, both companies need to build an appropriate charging infrastructure. They have both decided to implement the centralized depot charging concept. Buses can therefore charge only at the depot and do not have the possibility for opportunity charging at intermediate stations. The load profile of such a bus depot is highly dependent on the charging schedule of buses. Without an intelligent scheduling system, the buses charge on demand as soon as they arrive to the depot. This can lead to an unevenly distributed load profile with high load peaks, which is problematic for the local grid as well as for the equipment dimensioning at the depot. Charging scheduling on large-scale bus depots is a relatively new and poorly researched topic. This paper addresses the issue and proposes two algorithms for charging scheduling on large-scale bus depots with the goal to minimize the peak load. The schedules created with the proposed algorithms were both tested and validated in the Bus Depot Simulator, a cosimulation platform used for bus depot simulations.

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