Photo by JLaw45.

As area governments continue to struggle with funding Metro, some WMATA board members are looking at increased use of federal capital dollars for preventive maintenance currently paid out of the operating budget as part of the ultimate budget solution.

The challenge will be to ensure that the capital program is not compromised by doing so. Making the capital investment to support compressed natural gas (CNG) buses could bring in the necessary long-term savings.

WMATA buys about 100 buses per year in order to try to keep average fleet age at about 7.5 years — half the useful life of a Metrobus. The current average fleet age is about 8.4 years.

The program has achieved remarkable results compared to the days when I started as a bus operator in 1974. In those days it was not uncommon to take a 35 year old bus out of the garage and I usually broke down about once or twice a week.

When operating the old B9 route to Carter Baron, if I caught the light at 13th & Florida Ave NW going northbound, I could only get my passengers halfway up the hill before the bus ground to a halt. Passengers then departed the bus, walked to the top of the hill where I picked them up again and we continued on our way.

We need to make sure we don’t return to those days, but we also need to make sure we manage our resources wisely.

As we look at WMATA’s FY2011 operating budget, the bus service changes that I found reasonable would mean WMATA needs 12 fewer buses for a total of $7.2 million. Another project that I found reasonable to postpone is the purchase of additional farecard machines at a cost of $6.5 million.

These two projects could free up $13.7 million that could be used for preventive maintenance currently paid for out of the operating budget. That’s almost enough to offset either the bus or rail service reductions proposed by former General Manager John Catoe.

Here’s how much major transit systems use federal dollars to pay for preventive maintenance in the operating budget:

Transit systemCapital budgetPreventive maintenancePercentage
Washington, DC (WMATA)$721$304%
Chicago CTA$1,300$17313%
Los Angeles (LACMTA)$723$14220%
Boston (MBTA)$740$132%
Philadelphia (SEPTA)$451$409%
New Jersey Transit$1,200$30025%

Note: WMATA is General Manager proposed FY11, all other systems are FY10 actuals. Dollars in millions.

As critics of using capital money for operating budgets quickly point out, “That’s fine for this year, but what do you do in subsequent years?”

A solution may lie in WMATA’s bus replacement program. WMATA spends about $600,000 per bus purchasing diesel electric hybrids. They do this instead of purchasing compressed natural gas (CNG) buses mainly because the cost of retro-fitting its aging garages make it more cost effective to purchase the more expensive hybrids. A similar CNG bus would cost about $450,000.

WMATA is now in various stages of moving ahead to replace its aging bus garages. Royal Street garage in Alexandria will be replaced with a new facility on Cinder Bed Road in Fairfax. Proposals are moving forward to replace the old Southeastern garage with a new facility at the DC Village site and the current Southern Avenue garage with a new garage on-site. Discussions are underway about the possibility of replacing the Northern garage on 14th St. NW with a new bus barn at Walter Reed.

This provides the opportunity to design these facilities with a CNG refueling facility built in—substantially lowering the cost and making it only marginally more expensive than diesel storage tanks. Doing so would save approximately $15 million per year in bus replacement costs instead of purchasing the more expensive diesel electric hybrids.

Operating costs of CNG buses are on average less expensive than diesel electric hybrids and building fueling stations into the design of new garages will eliminate the cost of depot modification (see table). For an apples to apples comparison in the table, the cost of installing a diesel storage tank in a new garage would also have to be added.

100 Bus Life Cycle CostCNGDiesel Hybrid
Compression electricity$1,900,323 $0
Facility faintenance$2,443,272 $1,746,986
Propulsion-related system maintenance$6,258,817 $6,358,882
Battery replacement$0 $6,750,000
Fuel costs$24,418,105 $22,662,869
Emissions equipment$0 $0
Depot Modification$875,000 $140,000
Refueling Station$2,000,000 $0
Vehicle cost$34,236,570 $53,160,465
Total: Capital+Operating Cost$72,132,087 $90,819,202

Source: Transit Bus Life Cycle Cost, Federal Transit Administration, Washington, DC, 2007

The distance between failures for both types of vehicles at WMATA track fairly closely with neither having any real advantage over the other. In examining the greenhouse gas issue, diesel hybrid is superior in most categories, although the difference is not a vast one. Both types of buses outperform standard or “clean” diesel buses.

A move toward budgeting for CNG buses instead of diesel hybrids could free up significant funds in future years without endangering WMATA’s bus replacement program. Such a move could offset the use of $13.7 million in capital funds for preventive maintenance in the FY11 budget and help to avert drastic service reductions.