Metro impressed by hybrid buses

Here come the hybrids, making bus-tunnel air safe for humanity.

Since August, Metro Transit has logged 36,000 test miles on an articulated, 60-foot, diesel-electric prototype. Hybrids emit one-tenth the carbon monoxide of other new buses — which is why Metro expects to buy 200 of them next year for routes that ply the downtown Seattle tunnel between Convention Place and the International District.

A hybrid bus, like a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic hybrid car, contains both a fossil-fuel-burning engine and an electric motor. When the vehicle coasts or brakes, kinetic energy recharges the electric batteries. The vehicle doesn't have to be plugged into an outlet.

The emergence of hybrid technology is rescuing Metro from a potential debacle as it replaces its fleet of aging tunnel buses.

Before the 1.3-mile tunnel opened in 1990, local transit officials ordered 236 Italian-built Breda buses, which use diesel but are powered by electric trolley wires in the tunnel, keeping the subterranean air clean.

They cost $550,000 each, but there were numerous design and maintenance problems with them, and a broad market for the dual-mode Bredas never materialized.

"They got them here, in Nice, France, and not anywhere else," says Jim Boon, Metro vehicle-maintenance manager.

Replacing those buses with new Breda-type buses would require more than $1 million apiece, Boon said. Hybrids should be cheaper, at around $600,000 each. (By comparison, a diesel-only bus is $425,000, he said.)

Portland, Philadelphia and New York also are testing hybrids.

Metro transit operators are pleased with the performance of the prototype.

Bus No. 2599 is nearly silent at low speed, using only electric power. At around 15 mph the diesel motor kicks in. Electric and diesel engines share the workload equally at 40 mph, while diesel power predominates at freeway speeds.

The bus has an engine-braking gear, like the "B" gear on a Prius. Coasting down the South Holgate Street overpass from Beacon Hill to SoDo, driver Mike Freund pressed the "Low" button and set the coach into a 20 mph crawl without riding the brake pedal.

There's also a switch labeled "Tunnel Mode," to run all-electric beneath downtown.

Test drives are conducted with water jugs aboard to mimic a full load. Even so, the hybrid climbed Beacon Hill at 20 mph using its diesel engine plus two electric motors. A diesel-only bus would be lugging along at 5 to 7 mph.

"It's a pretty smooth bus to drive," said Freund, "it's fun."

High-occupancy dog lane

Reader John Williamson wonders why dogs are considered people on the bus, but not in HOV lanes:

"I was a longtime bus rider until I bought a new dog, which I take to work every day. I spent a great deal of time training her downtown in the free ride area to be a well-behaved, considerate bus-riding dog (which if you have ever ridden downtown, especially through Pioneer Square, makes her a better-behaved and better-smelling passenger than most on the route).

"This week, when I was ready to take her to work every day via the bus from Shoreline to downtown, I had to pay full, adult fare for her. Yet, I cannot use my dog as the other passenger for the HOV lanes. Why is that?"

"Actually, we get that question quite a bit," said state Transportation Department spokeswoman Melanie Coon. Other drivers ask if a pregnant woman, or a loaded hearse, can use the HOV lane.

The answer to all of them is no, she said, because car-pool lanes are for living persons, "outside the womb," to travel together. "It's a people-moving system."

And we didn't even know you could take your mutt on Metro.

Seeing red

Norma Line of Bellevue appreciates the Sound Transit 560 express bus from Bellevue to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and has a theory about how to get more people to notice and use this quick and inexpensive ($2) service.

"Make it a fun bus by painting airplanes all over it," she said, or have airlines put their logos on them. Better yet, paint all the city buses red like those in London, where she used to live.

Transit officials say they can't use an airplane motif because the 560 buses also are used on nonairport routes.

Metro's Web site for airport buses: transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/flymetro.html

Columnist Susan Gilmore is on special assignment. E-mail Bumper to Bumper at: bumper@seattletimes.com