Comments and Testimonies

Statement of Clean Air Council
On SEPTA's Replacement of Trackless Trolleys with Buses
June 26, 2003

Mr. Chairman, SEPTA Board Members, and Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Dennis R. Winters, and I am Deputy Director of the Clean Air Council, Philadelphia's oldest membership-supported environmental organization. I am here today to express the Council's opposition to SEPTA's plans to replace its trackless trolley fleet with buses.

The state law that created SEPTA requires the agency "to the maximum extent practicable to avoid air pollution by its vehicles; and to abandon no physical property that has useful and economic capabilities." Replacing trackless trolleys with buses, even hybrid buses, does not comply with either of these mandates. While diesel buses now come equipped with the latest pollution control technology, the vagaries of the maintenance of on-board emission controls over the 12 to 15 year useful life of a bus frequently results in buses, even the brand new low-floor buses, emitting smoke and soot. Recent health studies have confirmed and strengthened the link between diesel exhaust and cancer and respiratory illness.

The electricity used to power SEPTA's trackless trolleys comes off a grid-system that receives its energy from a lot of different sources, increasingly many of those sources are clean and renewable (solar, wind, hydro), in contrast to to diesel buses that are fueled by petroleum, much of it imported from abroad where its cost and availability can become problematic. What's more, power generated at a power plant is centralized and pollution is much easier to control than is SEPTA's fleet of over 1,300 diesel buses.

SEPTA soon will have a small fleet of low-emission "hybird" buses, but these should be used to supplant diesel buses in the regular fleet, not electric-powered trackless trolleys.

Compared to diesel buses, trackless trolleys are much quieter on Philadelphia streets and emit no on-site pollution in the neighborhoods they serve. And so far as SEPTA allows its diesel buses to sit and idle at turn-around points, the neighborhoods that have lost trackless trolley service are going to have to put up with significantly more air pollution in their communities.

There are undepreciated federal and state capital grant funds invested in power supply/distribution facilities and vehicle storage and maintenance depots for the trackless trolleys; these grants are sub-ject to refunds if trackless trolley service is discontinued. For example, extensive capital investments have recently occurred along the three Northeast Philadelphia Trackless Trolley routes, associated with the new Frankford Transportation Center project.

According to SEPTA's staff the incremental annual federal capital funding generated for each "fixed guideway" (regional rail, subway-elevated, light rail, trackless trolley) route mile is $57,632. The five trackless trolley routes comprise 42.5 round-trip route miles. Thus they generate almost $2,450,000 of federal funds each year that would be lost if diesel buses were substituted.

SEPTA's statistics show that the cost-per mile to operate trackless trolleys was actually lower than for diesel buses in 1995, 1996, 1997, and nearly identical in 1993 and 1998. The contrast is even greater when one considers that many diesel bus routes operate in less congested areas with higher operating speeds that tend to lower the per-mile cost for buses, whereas the five trackless trolley routes all operate in dense urban areas (e.g. Snyder Avenue, Castor Avenue). Bus costs for routes operating in similar envi-ronments are intuitively higher than the average for all bus routes. In recent years buses have replaced trackless trolleys on temporary or emergency bases to accommodate construction projects (or the whims of drivers on weekends who use buses in lieu of trackless trolleys), so that fewer trackless trolley vehicle-miles were accrued over which to spread the fixed costs of the trackless trolley power system and fleet. Also, SEPTA replaced nearly two-thirds of its diesel bus fleet between 1997 and 2002; this major infu-sion of new buses has resulted in a short-term reduction to per-mile bus costs. By contrast, SEPTA has delayed replacement of the 24 year-old trackless trolley fleet.

These factors are substantiated when one compares data from SEPTA's Route Operating Ratio Reports, for the Total CTD System vs. the five Trackless Trolley Routes, from FY 1997 to FY 2002. Trackless Trolley expenses are shown as growing at an astounding 2.66 times the rate of overall CTD expenses. Trackless Trolley vehicle mileage is shown as declining by over one-third - even though scheduled ser-vice levels on these five routes have remained nearly constant (e.g., the number of peak vehicles sched-uled was 49 in both 1997 and 2002) - while overall CTD mileage grew by almost 4%.

1997 2002 CHANGE

CTD TOTAL EXPENSES $ 457.8M $ 522.6M + 14.2%

TRACKLESS TROLLEY EXPENSES 13.5M 18.6M + 37.8%

CTD TOTAL MILEAGE 50.08M 52.03M + 3.9%

TRACKLESS TROLLEY MILEAGE 1.19M 0.78M - 34.5%

To summarize, the expected "savings" from converting the five trackless trolley routes to diesel bus op-eration are an illusion.

All five trackless trolley routes obtain some or all of their power from Broad Street Subway or Frankford Elevated Electrical Substations, so some economy of scale will be lost if trackless trolleys are discontin-ued.

SEPTA is bucking trends elsewhere. The other cities that operate trackless trolleys (Boston, San Fran-cisco, Seattle, Dayton) have replaced their fleets, and in the case of the latter three, extended their systems by converting all or portions of diesel bus routes to trackless trolley operation.

Clean Air Council is an environmental and public health advocacy organization with over 8,000 members in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Established in 1967, the Council's continuing goal is to fight for everyone's right to breathe clean air. The Council currently operates six programs: Clean Air Act enforcement, sustainable transportation, waste reduction and recycling, indoor air quality, renewable energy, and children's environmental health.

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