Sooty Diesel Buses to Be Eliminated by New State Rules

Smoke-spewing transit buses must disappear from California’s streets over the next several years under a far-reaching regulation unanimously adopted Thursday by the state Air Resources Board.

The new rules will require buses to use alternative fuels or cleaner diesel technology mandated in steps that would clean the entire fleet by 2007.

The costly regulation--the first in the nation to mandate lower polluting buses--is an initial step in a major new effort by California air quality officials to reduce the public’s exposure to diesel exhaust. The soot and gases expelled by diesel engines have been linked to lung cancer, asthma attacks and other diseases.

Some improvements in bus exhaust will be immediate as transit agencies buy new vehicles. But the most sweeping changes begin in four years, when new buses sold in California must eliminate nearly all soot.

“By the time this is fully implemented, there will be no smoking buses on the road,” said Thomas Cackette, the Air Resources Board’s deputy executive officer. “Some will be on natural gas. Some diesels will be retrofitted. But everything will be cleaner.”

Many of the state’s 75 transit agencies, including the Orange County Transportation Authority and Los Angeles County’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, endorsed the new standards as reasonable. Orange County transit officials said they are already committed to alternative fuel buses.

Local officials expressed concern, though, over the high price tag, which is estimated at $13 million a year statewide. School buses are exempt because of the high cost, but the air board later this year plans to develop a separate measure for the state’s 17,000 school buses.

Environmentalists criticized the measure as allowing dirty diesels to remain on the road too long although cleaner natural gas buses are already available and widely used in many areas, including Los Angeles.

“The rule did not go as far as we would have liked, but it is a step forward,” said Bonnie Holmes-Gen of the American Lung Assn. of California. “The bottom line is we’re going to have significant reductions in diesel pollution, which is the top item on our agenda because of the public health dangers.”

The regulation--which includes complex requirements to be phased in over the next 10 years--is designed to reduce diesel soot from new transit buses by 80% in 2004. It requires old buses to be equipped with new pollution devices beginning in three years.

Cackette said that “all buses will be virtually smoke-free” by 2004, and that by 2007 “whatever bus drives by you will be very, very clean.”

Two years ago, the state air board declared diesel soot a cancer-causing air pollutant that could cause 14,000 Californians alive today to contract cancer over their lifetimes. The bus regulation is the board’s first major action since then to lower the health threat.

The state’s 8,500 transit buses contribute a small fraction of the diesel soot in California’s air; trucks are by far the predominant source. But people in heavily populated urban areas, such as downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco, are heavily exposed to bus exhaust, so the air board considered the new regulation a priority. Also, transit buses are easier to regulate because they are publicly funded and the federal government picks up 80% of the cost of new buses.

Michael Kenny, the board’s executive officer, said the bus regulation “sets the stage” for similar, even more effective measures the air board is planning for everything from tractors to big rigs.

“The problem is not just transit buses,” Kenny said. “It’s the trash haulers, the school buses, the on-road trucks, the off-road vehicles--all the things that are out there today. We’ve got to figure out how to get them cleaner, and this transit rule gets us headed in that direction.”

One of the most important aspects of the new regulation is that it forces oil companies to sell low-sulfur diesel fuel in California in two years, Kenny said. The new fuel is required for soot traps and gas-controlling catalysts to work on all diesel engines, especially trucks.

State air board officials said forcing all transit agencies to buy alternative-fuel buses would be too inflexible. Instead, effective immediately, transit districts must choose between two paths in buying new buses: The “diesel path” allows a district to keep purchasing diesel buses as long as numerous conditions are met, including use of low-sulfur diesel fuel and the addition of soot traps and other pollution-control devices, between 2003 and 2007.

Under the other option, 85% of a transit agency’s new purchases must be powered by natural gas or other alternative fuels while 15% can be diesel buses. Those diesels, also, must be gradually equipped with the new pollution controls.

Either option will raise the cost of buses. A natural gas bus emits about half the pollution but costs $40,000 more than a $300,000 diesel model. For transit agencies that choose to continue buying diesels, the new smog devices will cost several thousand dollars each, and switching to low-sulfur fuel will cost an extra $600 per bus per year, according to air board estimates.

Buses operated by agencies that pick the diesel path will emit more soot for the next few years than those choosing alternative fuels.

But beginning in 2004, all new diesel buses sold in California must meet tighter standards. They will emit 80% less soot and 75% fewer nitrogen oxides, a main ingredient of smog, compared with a bus manufactured today. Then, in 2007, nitrogen standards will tighten again, dropping another 60%.

Under the new regulation, some pollution-free buses--powered by fuel cells or batteries--will be on California streets within three years. By 2010, 15% of new buses at transit districts with more than 200 buses must have zero emissions.

The air board’s vote had been expected last month, after a daylong public hearing in Diamond Bar. But at the last minute, board Chairman Alan Lloyd requested a one-month delay to explore changes suggested by environmentalists to more quickly eliminate diesel buses.

Environmentalists, along with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, urged the board to kill the diesel option for the state’s smoggiest areas--the Los Angeles region and the Central Valley. The board, however, rejected that as impractical for some transit districts.

The board did, however, accelerate by two years the pace at which all old diesel buses must be equipped with new exhaust-cleaning devices.

Lloyd said the air quality improvements are designed to come gradually. “Unfortunately,” he told environmental advocates at last month’s hearing, “we can’t wave a magic wand and make all the vehicles operate more cleanly.”

Bus agencies in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties may soon have to go even further in cleaning up fleets than the rest of the state. Next month the AQMD board will vote on whether to require all public vehicle fleets, including transit and school buses, to switch to low-polluting technologies.

Alternative fuels, mostly compressed or liquefied natural gas, have caught on in recent years in many of the nation’s urban transit districts.

Orange County transit officials said Thursday that the new rule will have little effect on them. An initial order for 60 liquefied natural gas buses is scheduled for delivery this summer, and another 172 are on order for the summer of 2001. Local officials say they were able to largely offset the higher costs of the alternative fuel buses--$330,000 compared to $280,000 for diesel--through air quality grants.

OCTA is also converting its Garden Grove bus yard into a liquefied natural gas depot. All told, Orange County has invested nearly $80 million to bring cleaner fuel-burning buses to one of the nation’s fastest growing transit agencies.

“For bus riders waiting on the street, you won’t be able to smell the buses--they’ll be no exhaust,” said Jim Ortner, OCTA’s manager of transit technical services. “Our bus yard will be cleaner. We’ll be better citizens.”

Across California, 1,300 transit buses are already nondiesel, with 750 more on order.

Some areas, however, such as Los Angeles County’s large Foothill Transit District, Long Beach’s transit agency and most of the Bay Area, have no alternative-fuel buses.

Steve Heminger, deputy director of the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said switching that area’s entire fleet to natural gas would cost $260 million.

Times staff writer Megan Garvey contributed to this report.