City Fleet Going Green

Monday, March 14, 2011 08:10 PM

Prince George, B.C.- The City of Prince George is looking towards greening up it's fleet of vehicles.

The proposed three year plan presented to Council says there are a couple of ways to make the move to a greener fleet, but first, there will need to be "buy-in" from City staff.

According to Supply and Fleet Services Manager Scott Bone, there are gains to be made in reduction of green house gas emissions through a variety of means, including:

making sure the equipment is the right size for the right job.
reduction in idling (Bone says this policy alone has saved about $110 thousand a year)
move to hybrid-electric cars
driver training
route planning
preventive maintenance

Bone says while the City used to use bio-diesel fuel in some of its diesel equipment, that ended at the end of 2010 when bio-diesel was no longer available in Prince George. There are discussions underway to find an alternate source.

Previous Story - Next Story

Email |

Print |

Facebook |

Twitter |

Digg |

Del.icio.us

Posted on Monday, March 14, 2011 08:10 PM in News by 250 News

Return to Home

Comments

Posted by: Harbinger on March 14 2011 8:41 PM

Saving a $110,000 dollars a year by reducing idling? Wow! How many vehicles? How many miles (kilometers). How much was the gasoline bill last year? How much the year before? Show me some simple math and some receipts, pal. Din't anyone tell Mr. Bone a million times not to exaggerate? $110,000 dinars? Ya right. Show me.

Posted by: lonesome sparrow on March 14 2011 8:49 PM

I would like to see how they came up with 110K saved just by reducing idling. Unless the equipment is always running it would be optimistic to see much more than a 1% saving, which would mean an $11 million/ year fuel bill.

Posted by: pgguru on March 14 2011 8:53 PM

Mr Rogers spending spree

Posted by: But on March 14 2011 9:01 PM

Just say no!

Posted by: boomer on March 14 2011 9:39 PM

Imagine how much the City and School district could save if they restricted the trips to Timmies.

Posted by: Harbinger on March 14 2011 11:16 PM

Route planning? Again, ya right. But then again why not plan a direct route? The less time spent driving over potholes the better. All the potholes in this 'burg are certainly not much of an incentive to wander all over town getting to yer destination.

Posted by: Harbinger on March 14 2011 11:19 PM

Would a "preventive maintenance" program be cheaper than a membership with BCAA? Spend $10,000 dollars to do a study.

Posted by: seamutt on March 14 2011 11:39 PM

Save a hell of a lot more if they would dump the bs carbon tax.

What is this green thing, spell it out? What do you mean by green? Bone do you know how many toxic materials are in a green hybrid? What is the depreciation on a hybrid?

Route planning, your joking right. Lets see Frank has to take a loader upto Hayer road, lets have a meeting to plan the greenist route. The grader has to go to Boeing, another green meeting. After a few route planning meetings its quitting time now that is green as no equipment hit the road.

Hey just fix the dam potholes how hard is that.

Posted by: metalman on March 15 2011 1:14 AM

How can Bone possibly believe that the city saved any given amount of dinero due to a reduction in idling? Does the city have some new fangled meter that tots up the savings when someone switches off the ignition for a moment? If their pipe dream is simply based on year to year fuel costs, maybe they just purchased less fuel. I'll tell you what would really save some money, a reduction in idling time of certain city workers. And why did the City buy into the myth of biodiesel without ensuring a long term supply? Instead of going green by throwing out (trading in or auctioning) a lot of perfectly good vehicles in order to get new ones, why not REALLY go green and continue to maintain the ones we already have? Come on, you don't set about saving the planet by turning in a lot of functioning machinery in trade for a lot of new machinery. Going green eh? A load of rubbish I say.
metalman.

Posted by: But on March 15 2011 8:30 AM

An excuse to just upgrade the fleet because a few managers are tired of the ones they have. As for less idling, thats a joke, just pay attention to how many mowers in the summer sit around idling at lunch time and break time to keep the air conditioning running. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm insulted if city hall thinks we are so stupid that we buy this savings from less idling bull.

Posted by: interceptor on March 15 2011 9:06 AM

According to a few quick website checks cars burn about 2 litres per hour and heavy trucks burn about 3.5 litres per hour while idling. At $1.27 per litre than a single heavy truck would need to idle for about 22,500 hours to make up $110,000. A single car would have to idle for about 43,000 hours. How many vehicles does the city have in its fleet?

disclaimer - I just pulled the info for gallons per hour off of some transport websites. Post made for discussion purposes only ;-)

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on March 15 2011 9:15 AM

Dividing the 110 thousand/year into the number of working days (no weekends) yields about 440 dollars per day, or about 400 liters per day saved by not idling.

That is not an unreasonable number. If the drivers actually adhered to the new no idling rule it is entirely possible that a lot of money and fuel was saved.

We should commend them for that.

Other savings are possible by replacing large pickup trucks which are not used for hauling stuff with smaller ones.

Look at what Canada Post has done by replacing the old gas guzzlers with the smaller Ford European made 4 cylinder vans!

Posted by: seamutt on March 15 2011 10:02 AM

Metalman you said it right about trading in older vehicles. Using the flipping of the PG hotel for an example city hall is math challenged.

Posted by: gamblor on March 15 2011 10:07 AM

This was just a news release to throw the word "green" out there. Blah blah blah Green. Blah blah green green. blah. They forgot the word "green" has lost all meaning. Its been beaten to death already.

Posted by: giterdun on March 15 2011 1:50 PM

Just a warm, feel good, fuzzy program....Does nothing but cost the taxpayer, big time. All of these GREEN JERKS should get back to reality before we go broke.

Posted by: Harbinger on March 15 2011 2:19 PM

If the city is gonna buy new green vehicles, are they gonna buy them in Williams Lake again? Get a deal on tires, too? I remember.

Posted by: metalman on March 16 2011 12:02 PM

Good point Harb thanks for reminding us that the City of Prince George does not support local business exclusively.
I believe they should, even if the prices are slightly higher. Any one of us are capable of a little research when contemplating a large purchase, so that we know approximately what the pricing should be an negotiate accordingly with the vendor. Who are the citiots trying to impress?
Buying local means supporting local vendors, who employ local people, who all shop locally to some extent, and the money stays in town, to a certain extent.

WHO PAYS THE MUNICIPAL TAXES?

metalman.