The State of Play for Public Transit

By Air, Land, and Sea: Navigating the Climate Future
Find out more about the briefings in this series below:
Part 1	Ports Leading the Way on Mitigation and Resilience
Part 2	After COVID: A Lower Carbon Future for Commercial Aviation
Part 3	The State of Play for Public Transit
Overview of the transportation series

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing series on climate mitigation and adaptation in the transportation sector. The series covered ports, aviation, and public transit.

Public transit systems across the country have seen major declines in ridership due to COVID-19. In spite of this and other challenges brought on by the pandemic, many transit systems have not wavered on their climate and sustainability commitments. Dr. Cris Liban of Los Angeles Metro, Kammy Horne of VIA Metropolitan Transit in San Antonio, Texas, and Erik Johanson of Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority discussed the current state of their climate mitigation and adaptation work, and looked ahead to share the economic, health, equity, and community benefits of investing in transit.

HIGHLIGHTS

 

Dr. Cris Liban, Chief Sustainability Officer, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, California

• LA Metro is a state-chartered special jurisdiction that acts as LA county’s regional transit planner, funder, system builder, and operator.
• LA Metro’s sustainability program began in 2007 and has been cost-neutral since 2017. The program’s economic success has come from selling carbon credits, establishing private-public partnerships, and setting up other funding mechanisms that have generated $120 million in net revenues, which have been reinvested into other sustainability projects.
• LA Metro’s 10-year sustainability strategic plan was recently approved, which will continue the self-sustaining, self-funding sustainability program, and LA Metro expects the program to generate about $1 billion over the next decade.
• The pandemic has changed the assumptions and baseline conditions of LA Metro's programs, and the LA Metro Recovery Task Force is exploring how the entire system can be reimagined with a focus on equity, justice, and diversity principles. The agency will be investing more in people, partnerships, and procurement innovations to better realize the agency’s sustainability mission.
• LA Metro has been studying the effects of infrastructure on the environment and vice versa.
• Mass transit is inherently sustainable, so anything done to further improve transit improves sustainability.
• LA Metro has adopted an adaptive design/flexible adaptation pathway model, and it is incorporating new climate science into infrastructure planning and design to make systems more adaptive to the future effects of climate change.
• Resources that support infrastructure work include the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Sustainability Roadmap as well as ASCE’s manual on incorporating climate data into practice, a white paper on developing procurement documents, and certification for sustainable infrastructure engineers.
• There is also the International Coalition on Sustainable Infrastructure, which focuses on guidance, tools and standards, financing and funding, innovation, leadership, and infrastructure life-cycle. This coalition consists of private organizations, the Global Covenant of Mayors, and the Institution of Civil Engineers.

 

Kammy Horne, AICP, Senior Vice President of Planning and Development, VIA Metropolitan Transit, San Antonio, Texas

• VIA Metropolitan Transit serves the city of San Antonio, Texas.
• VIA has taken a comprehensive approach to addressing the pandemic.
  • VIA mapped the transit system’s critical corridors to meet the needs of passengers and essential workers.
  • The agency found ridership never fell below 50 percent of regular ridership, indicating the critical need for bus services.
  • VIA eliminated ride fares to eliminate passenger-driver contact, and protective curtains were added in the buses.
  • VIA’s focus changed from increasing ridership to maintaining safe distance on the buses and communicating service schedules to the public.
• Public transit is inherently sustainable, so any new sustainability efforts only further that goal.
• VIA has invested in compressed natural gas (CNG) for its buses. Conversion to CNG began in 2017, and once fully implemented, it will reduce NOx emissions by 97 percent compared to the replaced diesel buses. About 78 percent of the fleet runs on CNG.
• VIA recently entered into a new partnership with CPS energy, which will provide renewable natural gas from landfill biomethane for the bus fleet. VIA’s current CNG fleet can use the new renewable natural gas fuel, lowering CO2 emissions by 85 percent compared to diesel fuel. The partnership will go into effect in 2021.
• VIA also has a series of solar and electric projects and services. Seven transit facilities are fully or partially operated by solar power, half of the bus shelters are lit by solar power, and many facilities have LED lighting, drought resistant landscaping, and other sustainable design features.
• VIA has three electric buses and is planning for more in the future.
• VIA has a Permanent Pollution Prevention Plan, and the agency also focuses on other areas of sustainability outside of clean energy, such as water, waste, and recycling.

 

Erik Johanson, Chief Innovation Officer, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)

• SEPTA has approached sustainability in a budget-neutral way. With limited financial resources for sustainability, especially now during the pandemic, SEPTA’s approach provides a lot of instructive lessons for others to follow.
• Public transit is already inherently sustainable, with lower per-passenger-mile greenhouse gas emissions than cars.
• SEPTA’s approach emphasizes the triple bottom line by promoting public safety and health, the economy, and equity. Transit is a social, economic, and environmental net benefit to society, and it advances sustainability.
• SEPTA has never had a set budget for sustainability. Instead, sustainability has been pursued through off-budget financing, grant funding, and embedding sustainability into SEPTA’s core business operations.
• There are nine energy storage batteries installed at SEPTA substations, providing 11 MW of storage. The batteries capture energy from the regenerative braking of trains and puts the stored energy back into the system. These projects were financed through private-public partnerships and grants and were funded completely off-budget.
• The conversion to electric bus technology will be the most difficult challenge to SEPTA’s budget-neutral approach.
• Through Power Purchase Agreements, SEPTA has on-site rooftop solar at its largest bus maintenance facility, and 20 percent of its electricity load is met through off-site utility-scale solar.
• SEPTA created a solar and battery-powered signal system via a Federal Transit Administration grant partially funded through a federal climate resilience initiative. The solar and battery system provides 48 hours of back-up power in the event of signal power failure, which happens frequently due to downed power lines. This system demonstrates how investments in sustainability are not only good for the environment, but they are also good for business.

 

Q&A Session

 

How are transit agencies continuing their climate and sustainability work given the economic impacts of COVID? How will the ways these projects are funded allow them to continue?

• Horne: Partnerships and grants are important opportunities that we can tap into for funding our work. Many of these projects will actually produce cost savings, so as we move into the future, post-COVID, the cost savings from these sustainability projects are important opportunities.
   
• Liban: Many transit agencies already come together to share information and experiences with each other to make greater sustainability a way of life. LA Metro also approaches sustainability as a business. In 2014, LA Metro asked the board for authority to explore alternative forms of funding and financing, which shifted sustainability programs from a cost-center to a profit-center. We have been contributing to the agency’s “Green Fund,” and since 2017, the entire program has been cost-neutral. Through cost savings, carbon credit sales, and other initiatives, we have generated over $100 million that has gone into the Green Fund to help fund new initiatives and projects that create monetizable benefits. In California, cleaner fuel creates carbon credits that can be sold on the open market, and with each credit worth around $200, aggressive initiatives can generate money. Carbon credits have been producing $10 million every year for the Green Fund.

 

Could you explain the relative importance of your local, state, and federal government as sources for funding and revenues? Are the policies you typically rely on state or federal?

• Johanson: We are primarily funded as a state agency, with the lion's share of our funding coming from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. About half of our capital funding is from the federal government and half is from the state with a match from our local counties. Our board consists of representatives from each of the local counties, so we pay close attention to all three levels of government and are aware of their priorities.
   
• Liban: LA Metro is sales tax dependent, with funding secured through voter initiatives. The most recent initiative passed in 2016 and has no sunset, so it allows the agency to invest up to $120 billion over the next 40 years. We also lobby on the federal level for infrastructure funding. Most recently, we were part of an American Public Transportation Association (APTA) consortium to ask for additional transit relief, which we received a little of in the latest stimulus package. We also focus on state initiatives, mostly on sustainability and resilience, and we try to use state policies and regulations to our advantage.
   
• Horne: Historically, the city of San Antonio has had to be creative because we are primarily funded through sales taxes, half a cent compared to a penny for the other major Texas cities. At the city level, we have incredible partnerships with the city of San Antonio. We partner with them on the Bloomberg Climate Challenge, which has brought in resources for new sustainability ideas. At the state level, we partner with the Texas Department of Transportation, and recently, we opened our first HOV lanes and we'll be working with Texas DOT as operators and maintainers of those. On the federal side, we are working towards additional funding and grants.

 

What are the challenges and opportunities of electric buses? What needs to happen to increase electric bus adoption?

• Johanson: We were an early adopter of electric buses at a large scale, 25 buses. We wanted to study and convert two entire routes to electric buses, and we have gone through those growing pains. This conversion has created impacts on scheduling, operations, and maintenance, and we are putting together the lessons learned with information from professionals in the industry to understand where this is all headed. One of the problems we are seeing is that it is easy to pilot electric buses, but it is extremely difficult to bring them to scale. Our master plan is focused on the dependencies and factors that need to be considered to bring electric buses to scale, including talking with utilities and coming up with charging solutions. We are putting that information into a cohesive document, so when we go beyond that first 25-bus fleet, we will be doing so in a manner that is building towards a scalable solution.
   
• Horne: Considering San Antonio’s limited funding, we want to make sure we are planning for a fleet and solutions that are sustainable from an infrastructure standpoint. Our CNG and renewable gas programs help us achieve our emission reduction objectives incredibly well.
   
• Liban: LA Metro operates one of the largest clean transportation systems in the country, already operating 2,400 buses that use renewable natural gas. We have a commitment to transform our fleet to 100 percent emission-free buses by 2030, and I am approaching this as an infrastructure project with a bus buy at the end. Already, there is limited space at our bus facilities, and when you need to install charging infrastructure, it can become very challenging. From a workforce development perspective, we have a very mature workforce, so we will need to identify what retraining looks like. Finally, if we can get some agreement between manufacturers, we would love for some policy or regulation to allow these technologies to have some uniformity across the system.

 

With respect to public transit, there seems to be a clear nexus of climate equity, climate justice, and sustainability. Can you speak about an equity-related initiative within VIA?

• Horne: VIA is constantly looking at the equitability of its services. Every time we make a change, even the COVID emergency changes, we make sure the service that we provide is equitable across our region. Public transportation provides so many benefits, and it provides everyone with a choice.

 

Highlights compiled by Hamilton Steimer