After a long history of disagreements, the T Riders Union and MBTA finally found something they could agree on.
The MBTA Board of Directors yesterday approved a plan seven years in the making to let the body monitor emissions of its bus fleet, which is in the process of being upgraded, and the findings will be published on the Internet.
T Riders Union spokesman Lee Matsueda, who served on the committee recommending the clean bus initiative, said he is pleased the MBTA will announce the results publicly.
“We did a lot of work to get newer buses and cleaner fuels,” he said. “It’s great that the results of the emissions testing will be posted online. This is a level of transparency rarely achieved with the MBTA.”
The program is the result of the MBTA’s cooperation with On the Move, a coalition of about 50 area community and environmental organizations that have been working toward such a measure since 2000. In 2002, the MBTA appointed a 15-member committee to examine bus emissions, with an On the Move representative serving as one of the members.
The committee recommended the MBTA purchase a fleet of 358 new compressed-natural-gas buses and 200 emission-controlled-diesel engine buses. It also suggested the MBTA fit older buses with filtering technology to reduce the worst diesel emissions.
Since then, the MBTA has phased in many of the new recommended buses, and the rest will be in service by this summer, said MBTA Bus Operations and Engineering Director Cheryl Hinton.
Under the new plan, a bus’s emissions will be recorded every time it returns to the garage after finishing its daily service.
“This technology will identify buses whose emissions do not meet standards, so we know if there are problems that we need to fix,” Hinton said.
Hinton added the $2 million service contract for the emissions-monitoring technology will run for at least three years, with the option of extending the contract for another two years.