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California Air Resources Board's transit bus fleet regulation required public transit fleets in California to reduce emissions starting in 2002 [1]. In response to this rule, San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) launched the “Alternative Fuel Pilot Project”. The objective of the project is to compare the on-road performance, emissions, maintainability, safety, and costs of advanced diesel and alternative fuel buses over a two-year period. This paper discusses the preliminary emissions results from chassis dynamometer testing conducted during the first six months of the emissions study. The California Truck Testing Service's dynamometer facility tested four types of buses: conventional diesel, conventional diesel with particulate traps, compressed natural gas, and hybrid-electric transit buses.

Although various legislation and regulations have been adopted to promote the use of alternative-fuel vehicles for curbing urban air pollution problems, there is a lack of systematic comparisons of emission control cost-effectiveness among various alternative-fuel vehicle types. In this paper, life-cycle emission reductions and life-cycle costs were estimated for passenger cars fueled with methanol, ethanol, liquified petroleum gas, compressed natural gas, and electricity. Vehicle emission estimates included both exhaust and evaporative emissions for air pollutants of hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide. nitrogen oxides, and air-toxic pollutants of benzene, formaldehyde, 1,3-butadiene, and acetaldehyde. Vehicle life-cycle cost estimates accounted for vehicle purchase prices, vehicle life, fuel costs, and vehicle maintenance costs.

A survey of diesel car and light truck owners was conducted in California to determine the importance of limited fuel availability in a household's vehicle purchase decision. Behavioral, attitudinal, and perceptual differences toward limited fuel availability are reported. In particular, the importance of fuel availability is examined as a function of the number of diesel fuel stations. Results are generalized to other non-gasoline vehicles.