World Conference on Transport Research (wctr) Moving towards cleaner fuels and buses in Mexico City: The Challenge of Choices

Abstract

The paper Moving Towards Clean Fuels and Vehicles in Mexico City – The Challenge of Choices provides a cost and emission reduction comparative analysis for alternative fuels, vehicle and emission control technology options for Mexico City’s bus fleet. This paper discusses the results of on-board emission measurement campaigns undertaken in Mexico City and provides a financial analysis based on capital, maintenance and fuel costs, normalized to the number of km the Metrobus fleet runs per year. The capital costs are presented with three alternative interest rates and payoff times – the financial conditions obtained in the first loan to Metrobus; the renegotiated loan conditions; and using financial parameters that convey a longer term perspective, favoring investments in cleaner technology. The financial comparison is done based on the first year costs, for simplicity sake. This paper shows that the financial parameters used in the analysis have a dominant impact on the cost-effectiveness of alternative vehicle and fuel alternatives.

1. Introduction

The Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) air basin covers over 1,500 sq km and includes approximately 19 million people in the Federal District of Mexico and in a large part of the State of Mexico. As previously documented, the infamous build-up of automobile travel has lead to one of the worst combinations of air pollution and congestion worldwide (Islas, 1996; Cervero, 1998; CAM 2002; Molina and Molina, 2002; SETRAVI, 2002; Schipper and Golub, 2003, Schipper, 2004).

In Mexico City, diesel vehicles – primarily buses, large trucks and some medium trucks - contribute to suspended particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) far above their share in the fleet or total km driven (SMA, 2006; Shipper et al., 007). Contributing to this situation was a shift in the early 1980s, from a large fleet of 12,000 publicly owned buses, to one of approximately 1,500 diesel and trolley buses and 30,000 mini-buses or para-transit, known as “micros” or “colectivos”. While some of the mini-buses have since been replaced by larger more modern diesel buses, the majority still carries 10-40 passengers, run on gasoline, or has been converted to liquid petroleum gas (propane, or LPG) or compressed natural gas (CNG).
Mexico City government authorities have recently decided to address emissions from heavy-duty passenger vehicles. In 2002, the program “Climate Friendly Vehicles” was created by the Secretary of Environment (SMA) of Mexico City, the World Bank (with its Global Environmental Facility) and EMBARQ - The WRI Center for Sustainable Transport, with the overall goals of reducing local air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions as well as enacting transportation improvements. Two projects were created within this program in 2002 and 2003, with the support of the World Bank/Global Environmental Facility, Shell USA, EMBARQ, and Mexico’s Government Authorities: Component 2 (C2) focused on the creation of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System along the Insurgentes Corridor which runs for 19.5 km crossing Mexico City from north to south; and Component 3 (C3) focused on testing fuels, vehicle and emission control technologies in new vehicles with the aim of providing guidance for the renovation of Mexico City’s bus fleet (World Bank, 2002; CTS, 2006a; Schipper and Golub,2003).
Given that buses tend to have a very long service life, in 2004, a related effort entitled the Diesel Bus Retrofit Initiative was sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA), the US Agency for International Development (US-AID) and EMBARQ, in partnership with SMA. The Diesel Bus Retrofit Initiative focused on testing how particulate matter emissions could be reduced in existing vehicles through retrofitting of diesel buses with oxidation catalysts (DOCs) and particulate matter filters (DPFs). With the agreement of SMA, this work also used the Ride Along Vehicle Emissions Measurement System (RAVEM), making results generally comparable with those of C3. Of special interest were the results of the testing campaigns demonstrating that the emission control technology still operated in a reliable manner at the high altitude of Mexico City (> 2500 m), an altitude close to that of Bogotá and a number of other large developing cities.
It is clear that to improve the transportation situation in Mexico City, measures will be needed that reduce the number of vehicle kilometers traveled, substitute larger capacity public transport vehicles for smaller ones, and improve the fuel and emissions intensities of the vehicles still in operation. With the goal of providing a basis for comparison and selection of vehicles, fuels and emission control technologies for the Mexico City bus fleet, the present paper provides a comparative analysis of the costs and effectiveness of alternatives, based on the Blumberg approach (Blumberg, 2004), and on the results from testing campaigns done under Mexico City operating conditions.

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