US cities pay too much for buses

(www.bloomberg.com)

355 points pavel_lishin | 1 comments | 26 Sep 25 13:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source

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myrmidon ◴[26 Sep 25 14:24 UTC] No.45386847[source]▶

I think this shows one of the downsides of trade barriers very well: You get stuck with undesirable industries (diesel bus manufacturing), binding capital and labor better used elsewhere (and you easily end up with underperforming, overpriced solutions, too).

But I'm curious how much this actually affects transport costs. If such a bus is used 12h/day, then even overpaying 100% for the vehicle should get outscaled by labor + maintenance pretty quickly, long before the vehicle is replaced...

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kjkjadksj ◴[26 Sep 25 17:36 UTC] No.45389020[source]▶

>>45386847 #

Aren’t most busses CNG these days?

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1. toast0 ◴[26 Sep 25 18:20 UTC] No.45389458[source]▶

>>45389020 #

Depends on fuel availability. Diesel is available everywhere. CNG has limited availability. In my county, we do have propane powered busses.

CNG and propane have much better emissions profiles, and vehicle lifetime and compressed tank lifetime are a good match for transit, as opposed to personal vehicles where when the compressed fuel tank ages out, the otherwise servicable vehicle turns into a pumpkin.

However, CNG ends up being expensive and may not save much versus diesel... The natural gas is usually not expensive, but compression requires a lot of energy input which is expensive.

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