Public lecture critically evaluating the transition to CNG for Delhi’s bus fleet by Prof. Madhav Badami

Date: Dec 18th, 2019
Event Link

Venue: New Campus, TISS

Professor Badami has a joint appointment in the School of Urban Planning and the McGill School of Environment. After having studied mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, he spent nine years in diesel engine development in the Indian truck and bus industry. His talk briefly reports the results of a follow up study (Krelling and Badami, 2019), in which him and his team evaluated the life-cycle costs (LCCs) of the Standard (high-floor), low-floor, and low-floor air-conditioned CNG buses and their diesel counterparts in India.

Their study aims to inform decision-making regarding the implementation of CNG buses, in concert with an assessment of their environmental and health benefits. While the LCCs for CNG buses are higher than for diesel for all three bus configurations, the significantly higher LCCs for the low-floor and low-floor air-conditioned buses, even for diesel, raises the questions of whether these buses are justified by increased patronage, and how they affect transit supply and affordability.

Overall, his studies demonstrate the need to analyze policies such as CNG implementation broadly, in terms of conflicts and trade-offs between environmental, and other (transit operation, socio-economic and equity) objectives, rather than narrowly in terms of only environmental outcomes.