Commentary | Elizabeth Gresh
“School bus!” my daughters exclaim as they spot the big yellow bus pull up to the curb. I can’t help but smile as we see the doors open and children, just a few years older than my own, climb aboard.
The days when it was my turn to sit with friends along the bench seating don’t seem that long ago. I remember the smile of the bus driver, the squishy seats, and, of course, the mischief that ensued at the back of the bus.
While it excites me that my children will get to experience this rite of passage, I am also concerned.
As studies conducted in the United States and Canada over the last decade have confirmed, diesel exhaust is particularly harmful on growing lungs and bodies, with links to asthma, respiratory disease, brain-fog and cancer.
While the no-idling policies around schools may have slightly curbed diesel exhaust exposure outside of buses, reports conducted in the U.S. found that diesel exhaust levels on school buses were 23 to 46 times higher than what the U.S. federal guidelines consider a significant cancer risk.
Our children are being exposed to these pollutants through the windows and floors as they merrily ride to and from school.
Another study, in Canada, showed that air pollutants can leak into school buildings if the school bus loading zone is close to the HVAC system. As our young people spend time learning inside school buildings, they could be exposed to harmful pollutants. To me, this all means that, not only should we be concerned about idling, but tailpipe emissions in general.
For a long time, diesel or gasoline school buses were the best we could do. Now, electric school buses have emerged as a promising alternative. They produce zero tailpipe emissions, offer a quieter ride for children and are less expensive to operate and maintain than traditional diesel buses in the long term. Not to mention that the federal government has been heavily subsidizing
the upfront costs of the buses since 2021 with its $2.75-billion zero-emission transit fund.
While New Brunswick has taken a few steps forward, with the recent purchase of 20 electric school buses and the participation in an Atlantic Canadian feasibility study, the province has yet to commit to full fleet transformation.
This past year, the Department of Education also purchased 90 new diesel buses for its fleet of 1,250 diesel and gas buses, essentially locking in new diesel pollution for their ten-year life span.
Provinces like Prince Edward Island and Quebec are well ahead of the game. They have already secured mass amounts of federal funding and have made sweeping commitments to transform their school bus fleets to electric within the decade.
This means they will replace thousands of diesel buses with electric models over the next seven years, ultimately improving air quality and health outcomes for passengers. So, what are we waiting for?
With what we know about children’s health and the climate crisis, why would the New Brunswick government be spending any public dollars on old technologies that we know cause harm?
For our children, our bus drivers, and our environment, I believe that starting today, New Brunswick should make a commitment to replace all decommissioned diesel, gasoline and propane school buses with electric school buses. New Brunswickers who’ve signed onto the Conservation Council of New Brunswick’s petition for fleet electrification agree.
Our children deserve a healthy, safe and reliable ride to school. They deserve the opportunity to breathe fresh air as they climb aboard, sit on the squishy bench, and make memories with schoolmates.
New Brunswick parents, school associates, environmental advocates and health advocates should all be pushing for New Brunswick to make a commitment to electrify the fleet.
We need to start thinking upstream about our health and environmental crisis by stopping the pollution before it enters our lungs, bodies, schools, and environment. And when we do this, the big yellow school buses can move from being more than an iconic symbol of childhood, but a sign of our bright future.
Elizabeth Gresh is a Consultant in Energy and Climate Solutions with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick
This article appeared in the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal on Monday, May 8, 2023.