Letter to the Editor

We need to expel diesel buses from the Olympia School District

Posted

The Olympia community may be divided on the city’s goal of having electric vehicle (EV) facilities for every home (see related story), but there should be a unanimous consensus on expelling diesel school buses from our schools.

That’s because there is an exciting opportunity for Olympia to both save money and reduce health burdens and noise by completely electrifying our school bus fleet. A recent podcast interview with Duncan McIntyre of Highland Electric Fleets explained how we could save money while getting an all-EV bus fleet for our schools while the operator takes all the risk, builds all the infrastructure, and makes all the investments needed in return for a 15-year contract to provide the bus service to the school district.

Better than a free lunch

There’s a great saying attributed to hard science fiction author Robert Heinlein that goes “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” often boiled down to TANSTAAFL in internet discussions. And people are right to be skeptical of anything that seems too good to be true.

But when it comes to certain problems where the solutions in place are essentially using century-old technologies – such as shuttling kids to and from school in diesel buses – the amount of waste and pollution in our current, 100+ year-old technology means that the gain available for adopting new technology is so big that it’s even better than a free lunch. Swapping out outdated technology can bring us such big gains in energy efficiency and pollution reduction it’s beyond a free lunch, it’s like a lunch you get paid to eat.

Olympia Schools leadership should recognize that diesel is flunking out in the world of today. Diesel engines are massive contributors to noise and particulate pollution health problems that especially target lungs still growing and forming. We need to expel the dirty diesels from the district within two years so we can:

  1. Save money in the short term and save LOTS of money in the long term and reduce reliance on dirty fossil fuels;
  2. Stop poisoning kids’ lungs and deafening kids riding the buses;
  3. Reduce diesel pollution and noise for all of us while we reduce our local greenhouse gas emissions;
  4. Give ourselves enhanced community resiliency by providing emergency power storage and response options in case of power interruption events;
  5. Help our local district maintenance staff get up to speed on fixing and maintaining the newest technologies.

Of all the school districts in Washington, Olympia’s should be at the head of the class on the transition to a better, cleaner school transport fleet. There is no district better positioned for leadership, given that we’re a fairly compact district and we are the home of the government that has recognized the existential threat posed by climate chaos.

Technology has advanced to the point that there is simply no reason for any school system to own or operate a fleet of antiquated, loud, polluting diesel buses when it can have a contractor, for less money, provide us with a fleet of quiet, clean EV buses to do the same work for less money.

Kids watch and learn from what we do much more than from what we say. We say that kids need to develop good critical thinking and the ability to analyze problems objectively and use good judgment. But then, despite all we know about the terrible health consequences of noise and air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, we stuff them in diesel buses. We need to smarten up.

Let’s prove to the next generation that we can be at least as smart as we’re asking them to be. Let’s do this. Every taxpayer in Olympia should write to the Olympia School Board and demand that the district kick its dirty diesel habit, expel the diesels from Olympia Schools, and graduate the district to an EV bus fleet now.

~ John Gear, Olympia

John Gear lives in Olympia. He is a nuclear engineer who served in the US Navy submarine force, got a master’s degree in Engineering Management from WSU, and is now an attorney in private practice serving consumers, elders, employees and nonprofits in Oregon. 

The opinions above are, of course, those of the writer and not The JOLT. Got something you want to get off your chest? Write it up and send it to us. We'll likely run it the same day we get it. 

Comments

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  • jimlazar

    Bravo!

    Indeed, school buses are a GREAT place to focus vehicle electrification.

    They only run 50 - 100 miles/day -- less than that for many routes. So they need smaller batteries than transit buses (those will come next).

    If they'd park at schools, they could be a ready backup power source in an outage. Charge during the school day on solar, and be ready to ferry kids home after school. The come back to the schools to park, and be available for grid backup from 5 PM to 6 AM.

    Thursday, March 16, 2023 Report this