Friday, July 1, 2011

City Investing In Hybrid Recycle Trucks

Here's a cool story that's not necessarily all about transportation, but is definetely related.

Spokane's current garbage and recycling trucks only get 2.6 miles per gallon! That's right 2.6 GALLONS PER MILE. To combat that terrible gas mileage, and take a greener approach in general, the City Council this week approved the purchase of four new hybrid trucks that are expected to get 30% better fuel efficiency.

If the hybrid recycling trucks perform well, the city will replace its 24 garbage trucks with hybrids. The Spokesman-Review has more details.

3 comments:

Charles said...

Great, anything that reduces the amount of oil we have to import will help us in the long run. I wonder if they will save money over the life of the truck? It takes $6 a gallon fuel for STA to break even on their hybrid buses, but they do use less fuel than the regular diesel buses.

SRTC Staff said...

I was wondering the same thing Charles. Sounds like they're waiting to see how the trucks perform before saying anything about breaking even or not. Should be an interesting experiment and if it works, hopefully other local jurisdictions will re-examine their fleet composition.

Dumpster Dude said...

Good decision, there are more fuel efficient Trucks these days.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.