Last month, the South Coast Air Quality Management District announced one of its largest CNG school bus awards to the tune of $25 million. In this economy, especially, it sounds like quite a windfall for school districts.
The award states that Los Angeles Unified School District will be able to use the funds to purchase 80 new CNG school buses. In all, six Southland school districts received more than $16.6 million for new CNG buses, with L.A. Unified leading the way with more than $13.5 million alone.
But, it’s not as easy as collecting the money and heading to their school bus dealer of choice to pick out the new vehicles. A matching grant requirement hangs over the heads of the school districts, money that will be mighty hard to come by amid large-scale teacher layouts and bus route reductions. As one pupil transporter told me, good luck in convincing the school board, especially when the public sees many school buses at less than capacity.
Another issue at play are the school bus CNG fuel tanks. The first CNG buses in California began arriving in the mid-1990s when the California Air Resources Board and air quality management districts like South Coast began pumping millions of grant dollars at school districts to embrace the alt fuel technology. Much of the initial money went to covering the new infrastructure costs and then to vehicle purchases.
At that same time, school bus life spans were also on the decline as school districts rode a dollar-green wave toward making the old, soot-spewing school buses a thing of the past. Many school districts that came into the possession of these CNG buses figured another round of funding could help them replace the vehicles by the time another 15 years rolled around.
That day has come.
With school districts constricting at an alarming rate, bus lives have been extended across the board, across the country. A very costly ramification that can be easily overlooked by the casual observer is that the CNG fuel tanks in those buses are only rated for a maximum of 15 years, at which point they must be replaced at, get this, $25,000 a pop.
