$5 million city bus!

[CACAdmin]

While the from page of the 'The Province' Newspaper yesterday focused on another tax grab transportation idea (proposed road tolls for the GVRD), buried in a small article on page A6 was the fact that the provincial government has stated that by 2009 Whistler will have 20 fuel-cell busses. The cost you ask? Well BC Transit (the crown agency responsible for all transit outside of the GVRD) is looking "for a company to produce the first two test fuel-cell buses for a total cost of $10 million." (that's $5 million per bus!:Eek: ). A regular bus only costs around $400 thousand.

According to the article, once the tests are done they'll order another 20 busses "for a total of $89 million under a federal-provincial Partnership". So guess we the taxpayers foot the bill.:mad: (get those will only cost $4.45 million each.:rolleyes: ).


We keep pushing fuel-cell technology but it isn't as 'green' a fuel as they would like you to believe. Although hydrogen itself doesn't produce greenhouse gasses, the production of hydrogen does. See the Rocky Mountain Institute article (http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid557.php) on Hydrogen as fuel. It states: "While a hydrogen fuel cell operates without producing emissions, making hydrogen can produce significant greenhouse gases and other harmful byproducts." It explains the various ways we can produce hydrogen.

[Melody]

Spend the 89 million on regular buses to improve transit service. Less people drive cars. All done.

Toooooooooo easy.

[Soggybottom]

Good call Melody :)

As has become my custom allow me to interject a conspiracy theory:
This stuff is from a movie called "Who killed the electric car"

Fuel cells are a way to make the general public feel like we are making progress on alternative transportation fuel, when the truth is that the whole idea is flawed and is being used to convince us that there is no reasonable choice but to drive with gasoline for a long time yet.

- (As mentioned above) hydrogen is a secondary energy source, meaning that other sources of energy are needed in the same or larger amounts to produce it. Since most energy is produced by fossil fuels, that means "a longer tailpipe" and no net reduction in pollution.
- Carrying hydrogen means every car on the road is a potential bomb. Also, the range of a full tank of hydrogen is less than gasoline meaning fuel tanks would have to be way bigger than they are today.
- Fuel infrastructure around the world would need to be completely reworked
- Costs are ridiculous and will be extremely difficult to bring into line with what people are used to paying for vehicles.


The movie talks about the EV1, an electric car you could charge up in your garage. GM leased a bunch of them in California, but refused to renew leases when they expired, even though the customers loved their cars. They took the cars back and crushed them. They were as fast and responsive as normal cars, had range comparable to gasoline with todays battery technology, and most of all, were affordable. Theres still the problem of where to get the electricity cleanly, but thats a lot easier to solve than the hydrogen problems. Anyway its a good flick, just depressing to realize that there could be clean cars on the road today but they are being deliberately kept off the market. The reasons were interesting, but I'll leave that for another post, bedtime :)

[Melody]

I think its also a way for politicians to respond to public outcry at the expense by throwing up their hands and saying "Oh well, we tried, but the public didn't want it." And of course, we aren't sparing any expense to have the news in other countries make a brief mention of our state of the art public transportation during the olympics. Our five minutes of fame will cost us 2 million dollars / minute.

[Melody]

Good call Melody :)

As has become my custom allow me to interject a conspiracy theory:
This stuff is from a movie called "Who killed the electric car"

Fuel cells are a way to make the general public feel like we are making progress on alternative transportation fuel, when the truth is that the whole idea is flawed and is being used to convince us that there is no reasonable choice but to drive with gasoline for a long time yet.

- (As mentioned above) hydrogen is a secondary energy source, meaning that other sources of energy are needed in the same or larger amounts to produce it. Since most energy is produced by fossil fuels, that means "a longer tailpipe" and no net reduction in pollution.
- Carrying hydrogen means every car on the road is a potential bomb. Also, the range of a full tank of hydrogen is less than gasoline meaning fuel tanks would have to be way bigger than they are today.
- Fuel infrastructure around the world would need to be completely reworked
- Costs are ridiculous and will be extremely difficult to bring into line with what people are used to paying for vehicles.


The movie talks about the EV1, an electric car you could charge up in your garage. GM leased a bunch of them in California, but refused to renew leases when they expired, even though the customers loved their cars. They took the cars back and crushed them. They were as fast and responsive as normal cars, had range comparable to gasoline with todays battery technology, and most of all, were affordable. Theres still the problem of where to get the electricity cleanly, but thats a lot easier to solve than the hydrogen problems. Anyway its a good flick, just depressing to realize that there could be clean cars on the road today but they are being deliberately kept off the market. The reasons were interesting, but I'll leave that for another post, bedtime :)

I have no idea how I do this, but somehow in researching the latest news on fish, I came across this article/interview about either the movie you're talking about or something like it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13600516/