At the end of the day, the concepts of auditing, data quality, and transparency seemed important to our community.  It has become too easy to say one is engaging in projects that are “green” or “sustainable” without some independent validation of these statements.  The Climate Registry requires that all reporting entities be validated by an independent and certified third party.  This means that our communities and riders could have confidence that the data the NCTD is reporting is in fact accurate.  This to me seemed worth the investment.

There is a downside to all of this work; however.  I am afraid to say that our initial baseline year does not measure up well to other industry entities.  In transit, one important metric is the amount of carbon public transit offsets.  So for every ton of carbon generated by our agency in conducting operations, we in theory offset an amount by having our riders avoid independent emissions from their choice to ride our more efficient service rather than driving their own car.  In New York, the MTA is able to achieve an emissions factor of 12 – for every 1 ton of carbon, they offset 12 tons.  Chicago achieved 5 this year.  Philadelphia 3.  The industry average is 1.9.  Unfortunately, NCTD is 1.6 for calendar year 2009.

The good news is that this gives us a new set of targets and goals to achieve to improve this number.  As part of our plan, in 2010 we turned on the green data center, we started deploying solar installations, we installed emissions controls on a segment of the Breeze bus fleet, and in September 2010 we installed a driver feedback system on the buses called GreenRoads to try to improve gas mileage.

Regardless of the numbers we achieved in our baseline year, by measuring ourselves and by having that number audited and verified, our community can now see the progress we make and trust that the numbers are real.

This project ran into many complications, not the least of which was the need to repair the facility roof.  We could have made the decision to compromise on the quantity of panels at the facility, but I think we made the right choice to go ahead and fix a facility that is a mission-critical site for the agency.

We also faced the significant challenge of putting panels in an area that is designated as a bioswale for retention of water and prevention of nonpoint source pollution runoff.  In order to protect that purpose, we  had to replace the irrigation system and all of the vegetation with something more suitable to the new environmental conditions.  The added benefit is that is allows us to cut our water consumption by over 25% at the site.

I want to say a big thank you to Dan Harding and Seth Worden at Transit America, and to Josh Beeson at Martifer Solar.

NCTD requires a high-availability environment now.  There is no getting around the fact that we run important, mission-critical systems on our infrastructure, and as such we can no longer afford to have unexpected and unplanned outages.  To meet this basic requirement, we must have the capability of creating power on-demand, nearly instantaneously should our power fail.  There simply are few choices on the market today to address this need for a facility of our size.

We could have taken the approach that we would provide our own ‘co-lo’ power via a set of natural gas generators.  This scenario would have allowed us to failover to SDG&E power should the natural gas units fail.  This option does not really make sense for our data center because firstly we’ve invested in solar pv power to offset the power demands, and secondly because our data center power draw is really too small to make this economical.  So from a business case, this is a poor choice for our scenario.

Another option was the fuel-cell based UPS.  The problem with this approach is simply the cost and the durability of the power.  We have had now two outages this year over 6 hours in duration.  There is simply no way we could sustain the entire data center on the fuel cells for this long.  And again, the business case is not there.

We are now investigating alternative fuel sources for the Kohler generator – either ‘clean diesel’ or biofuels.  While the biodiesel seems like a natural choice, the biggest issue is the long-term storage of the fuel.  Fuel that sits around for months can degrade due to algae or condensation.  Research indicates that not many entities are yet using biodiesel as their fuel choice for standby scenarios where the generator is not going to be used frequently.  So my next step is to contact the manufacturer to determine whether a biodiesel mix is appropriate in the generator, and what they would believe the ideal mix to contain.  We will then compare this to the emissions, performance, and price of ‘clean diesel.’

So while I am still not 100% reconciled that installing a generator is moving us in the right direction for a green data center, I am convinced that we’ve made the business decision which balances our environmental needs with our business realities.

This grant will allow the District to build on its basic commitment to the three elements of sustainability:  economic, social, and environmental.  We were awarded $2 million to build on our plan by investing in more innovative solar power installations at the District, and in to install plug-in vehicle charging stations at some of our rail parking facilities for our customers. 

The application process was highly competitive, with only $100 million available for Green Transit initiatives across the entire United States.  My organization was one of 43 entities receiving the funding, and received one of the largest awards in acknowledgement of the business case and ROI analysis put forth.  The project includes:

• Demonstrating the feasibility of deploying solar technology in the Rail right-of-way, thus leveraging space that cannot be utilized for other purposes.  Makes idle property more productive and possibly revenue-generating
• We will also be installing solar at maintenance and administrative facilities to offset power needs at those locations.
• Deploying parking spaces with charging units for plug-in vehicles as a value to our customers.
• Installing solar carports at some parking lots to both provide power and provide better parking options to our customers. 

This grant award is part of an overall commitment to sustainability that includes other steps like an energy-efficient data center, replacing parking lot lights with more efficient options, the creation of a new Compressed Natural Gas fueling station, our approach to transit-oriented design for transit centers and stations, the use of solar along the COASTER right-of-way to power our wireless security system, the replacement of older buses with CNG-powered vehicles, paratransit, and our commitment to being a long-term sustainability partner with the communities we serve.

by Angela Miller
We haven’t formally announced it yet, but yesterday NCTD went live on Google Transit finally.  This was a nearly 9 month effort to get our schedules loaded into the Google Maps tools.  Now when people are looking for directions in San Diego County, they can also choose to find the optional public transit path with next departure times.

The thing that is really nice about this tool is that it consolidates information from NCTD, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, Amtrak, and other southern California transit entities so that it doesn’t matter who is providing the service you can still easily plan the trip.

Anything that makes public transit a more convenient option for the community is a good investment in my mind.  And unlike some of the other technology investments, this one cost the District almost nothing and should have a significant return.

My plan is to now jump off of this and leverage this tool to provide better information for the community through kiosks, and devices for our security and customer service teams that help all users better plan their trips.

Also thought I would mention that there is a SPRINTER application in the iPhone Applications Store.  I’m not endorsing it, but it is there.  This application was built by an independent third party developer using just our paper schedules.  My intent is to make our schedules available in the Google Transit Feed format on our website for any developer who might want to create applications.  Exciting stuff.