Say thanks to the bus spotters who keep the lists up to date.

I saw it today as well – here’s a link:

https://www.busnews.com.au/cambridge-expert-warns-melbourne-hydrogen-buses-are-destined-to-fail/

A postscript to my post. I have just found an article on Australasian Bus and Coach, and an expert from Cambridge has warned that the trials of hydrogen buses in Melbourne is destined to fail. Apparently, many cities has tried this and it backfired because it is dependent on fossil fuels and costs more than electric buses (which various operators including Transit Systems, Sunbury Bus Lines, Ventura Buslines and Kinetic Melbourne use). It also noted that the high capital and fuel costs dogged the hydrogen buses that were used at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games a few years back.

So even though I said I looked forward to checking these out, I am beginning to regret my comments because of this. I now feel that both the Victorian Government and Transit Systems has made a major mistake here.

The bus list link is informative. I had no idea Kinetic had so many buses.

You’ve gotta love the Victorian Government – we first trialled hybrid buses way back in 2009 but only started buying them en masse a decade later:

https://wongm.com/2019/09/new-melbourne-hybrid-buses-cdc-melbourne-transdev/

And now we’re decided to be stragglers in trialling hydrogen buses, just in time for other operators to say battery electric buses are cheaper.

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/real-world-figures-hydrogen-buses-cost-2-3-times-more-to-run-per-km-than-battery-electric-ones-says-italian-study/2-1-1511785

With buses, Transit System has a couple of hydrogen buses, and I haven’t been on a hydrogen bus, but I have been on a hybrid (operated by CDC Melbourne) and electric (a couple operated by Transit System and a couple operated by Kinetic), and they are very quiet, so quite enjoyable. As I live in Delahey, I could see the hydrogen buses on route 420 along Kings Road very soon.

Kinetic is up to 24 electric buses and 30 hybrid buses in their fleet – but that’s in a fleet of almost 600!

https://fleetlists.busaustralia.com/vic.php?search=KIM

18 years is younger than some route buses still in service – normally they stay in frontline service until 15 years old, then a few years demoted to peak use only, before their initial owner sells them around age 20 years, and they get sold to charter or rail replacement bus operators.

Off topic but as we sat in the gutter as we brunched in Commercial Road, Prahran yesterday, two of the four Alfred Hospital bound buses were electric. They were just so quiet and we weren’t gassed by diesel fumes. I’m loving these electric buses.

But it’s also revealing to see the age of the bus — 18! I find some of the heaviest polluting heavy vehicles on the road are buses going about their daily business, spewing out clouds of grey-black diesel exhaust in residential areas that makes us all sicker. So many of them need to be scrapped.