Environmental assessment and improvement strategies for electric bus operations

Abstract

In accordance with worldwide environmental problems and fossil oil dependency concern, green mobility with electric buses is receiving increasing attention as an essential road transport. Environmentally, electric buses emerge as a promising solution in particular to alleviate the emission and noise pollution. Nevertheless, there is no available method on how to quantify green (environmental) performance of electric buses that could provide proper guidance to the bus operators. Therefore, this study aims to construct a green index assessment and improvement framework for electric buses by capturing bus noise, emission and energy consumption level explicitly. The proposed framework, which is capable of quantifying the green level of electric bus operations, plays a vital role in improving the green performance of bus operating system, by considering numerous operational aspects. In order to examine the applicability of the proposed approach, an illustrative case study, focusing on the electric bus operations of Putrajaya (Malaysia), is analyzed accordingly. The resultant findings show that the green performance of electric buses would be different at varying degrees, depending on various inter-correlated factors. It is anticipated that this study may reveal some beneficial insights for the bus operators to operate environmental-friendly electric buses feasibly.