Air Quality Considerations
Fleet Management is assisting in Montgomery County’s effort to reduce harmful emissions that contribute to the Washington Metropolitan Region’s serious air quality problem. The Region’s air quality problem primarily results from ground-level ozone, a harmful gas formed when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) react with sunlight. Much of the Washington area VOCs and NOx comes from vehicle emissions.
Fleet Management purchases environmentally-compliant vehicles and maintains the County’s vehicles, including the buses for the County’s mass transit system, Ride-On, thereby reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. Older, more polluting vehicles are removed from service and sold or shredded and recycled as scrap metal.
Fleet Management’s air quality improvement efforts include:
Buses are maintained on a regular schedule to assist in reducing emissions. Additionally, older buses are replaced with more environmentally-friendly buses that run on com pressed natural gas (CNG) or hybrid diesel-electric technology. Other new buses use clean diesel technology to reduce emissions. Fleet has also piloted biodiesel fuel for transit and heavy duty vehicles, and is moving additional vehicles to biodiesel.
A multi-technology fleet of alternative-fueled vehicles is being utilized in order to benefit from expected improvements in operations, costs, and environmental impacts as these different technologies evolve. The County fleet currently includes the following cleaner emission and/or alternative fueled vehicles:
- 117 CNG buses
- 67 Diesel-Electric Hybrid buses
- 3 CNG light trucks
- 191 Hybrid vehicles (compact\small SUV\Vans)
- 39 Electric Vehicles (Cars\Fork Lifts)
- 947 Bi-fuel (ethanol E-85 and unleaded gasoline) cars and light trucks
- 138 Clean Diesel buses
Fleet Management Services vehicle maintenance facilities have made great strides in reducing the amount of solvents and other airborne chemicals used in our operations. To that end we:
- Recover & re-use of air conditioning refrigerant
- Use microbial and aqueous parts washers
- Reduce use of aerosol products
- Use low VOC paint in our vehicle painting operation and painting in spray booth equipped with exhaust filters
These efforts also reduce our use of hazardous materials and hazardous waste.
Fleet Management Services has a Vehicle Idling Policy in effect at our facilities to reduce vehicle idling in our operations in order to reduce air pollution and conserve fuel.
