Improving the environmental performance of bus fleets in Europe

Predictive Maintenance Systems (PdM) for bus fleets are gaining momentum among transit operators in Europe, although two major issues in this practice are still not fully addressed in mitigating negative impacts on the environment: emissions control and water management. To this end, the paper presents some innovative Dashboard Functions (DF) for a specific PdM, based on a software, already developed within a project funded by the European Commission (EBSF_2), with the goal to optimize predictive maintenance at bus garages. The first DF is aimed at assessing the emissions generated by buses, especially when fleets are composed by pre-EURO VI vehicles (one in three buses in the world is still pre EURO IV). The second DF is focused on the water management and control for washing buses: an underestimated issue, but still relevant in pursuing sustainability, since according to garage practice a vehicle needs around 300 litres of fresh water to be cleaned, typically 4 times a week, which multiplied by the almost 700,000 units which compose the European fleets generate 43 million m3 of yearly water requirement. The paper describes the results from the assessment of both emissions and water in the software, with a special focus, for the former, on the problem of obsolescing vehicles and their components specifically contributing to the emissions phenomenon; for the latter, in turn, the paper focuses on the application of different washing technology. The research goal is to advance scientific knowledge further afield and provide examples of best practices in the field of PdM implementation for bus fleets.