Member-only story
Brampton Transit Study’s $360M Gap: Hydrogen Misrepresented as Budget-Friendly
Canadian transit ‘think’ tank CUTRIC lowballs hydrogen costs and raises electric costs to game hydrogen buses into blended fleet
Recently I’ve become aware that a purportedly neutral and data-centric transit organization, the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC), has been advancing hydrogen for urban transit in contradiction of global evidence of failure. A contact forwarded me a more detailed study that they’d done for the Canadian city of Brampton, one that led the city’s transit staff to recommend adopting hydrogen buses as part of their mix. The study has some glaring challenges that create a fiscal swing almost 40 times bigger than the winning scenario’s cost variance over a pure battery-electric scenario which are worth calling out.
This is part of what is turning out to be a mini-series with CUTRIC as a main character. My assumption outline in the first assessment, Canadian City About To Buy Hydrogen Buses Because Feds & CUTRIC Captured by Hydrogen Lobby, was that a good organization had been spun by the rather large number of gas distribution companies and hydrogen lobbyists that had become members. Really, why are natural gas distributors and lobbyists Fortis BC…
