AC Transit, a public transit provider located in the East Bay area of California, recently announced that its fuel cell bus fleet has accumulated more than 550,000 miles and carried more than 1.8 million people – a major milestone! AC Transit has operated fuel cell buses in regular bus service since the early 2000s and currently leads a group of regional transit agencies (AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit, SamTrans, VTA, and Muni) called Zero Emission Bay Area (ZEBA) that currently operates 12 zero-emission fuel cell buses in real-world service throughout the region.
AC Transit fuel cell bus
These aren’t the only fuel cell buses in North America. CTTransit operates five fuel cell buses in regular transit service the Hartford, Connecticut region. Other U.S. transit agencies operating fuel cell buses include:
– Flint Mass Transportation Authority (Michigan) – one fuel cell bus
– Joint Base Lewis-McChord (Washington) – one fuel cell shuttle bus
– SunLine Transit (California) – one fuel cell bus
– BurbankBus (California) – one fuel cell bus
– San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (California) – one compound hybrid bus that uses diesel fuel, a lithium-ion battery, and a small fuel cell
– CapMetro (Texas) – one fuel cell bus
– University of Delaware – two fuel cell shuttle buses
Even more fuel cell bus deployments are planned in Alabama, Illinois, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Ohio and Washington, D.C. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has a great page tracking and reporting on Department of Energy and Federal Transit Administration-backed fuel cell deployments – check it often since the webpage is updated several times each year.
And not to forget our neighbors to the north – BC Transit, of Vancouver, British Columbia, operates 20 fuel cell buses, the largest fuel cell bus fleet in the world. At the end of 2011, Ballard Power Systems reported that its fuel cell modules had powered the BC Transit bus fleet through 1 million miles of service. Fuel cell buses have also been deployed in Brazil, Europe, Australia, Japan and China. See Fuel Cell 2000′s Worldwide Fuel Cell Bus Chart and U.S. Fuel Cell Bus Chart to learn more.
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January 4, 2013 @ 3:15 pm
Jennifer says...
The Fuel Cell Buses in U.S. Transit Fleets: Current Status 2012 report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) shows that the fuel economy of fuel cell electric buses is 1.8 to 2 times higher than conventional diesel buses (4 mpg) and compressed natural gas buses (3 mpg). This shows significant fuel economy improvement toward the DOE and Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) target of 8 mpg (diesel equivalent).