This morning I have read three stories trumpeting $6.9 million in federal aid to help Albuquerque Public Schools acquire 20 electric school buses and related infrastructure — in the Albuquerque Journal, City Desk ABQ, and at KUNM — and not one of them tells me where APS will be getting its e-buses.
One would think that after the Albuquerque Rapid Transit debacle — in which e-buses from BYD began falling apart like big-box bicycles, and the understudy, New Flyer, suddenly faced a fraud complaint over charges that it failed to hold up its end of a wage-and-benefits deal — our local newsdawgs might want to sniff out something other than a PR flack’s farts. Especially since, as far as I know, diesel, hybrids, and compressed natural gas remain the modus operandi for the bulk of the city fleet.
This will apply to the APS fleet, too — once all the e-buses are buzzing along The Duck! City streets, they will represent about 10 percent of rolling stock.
So, after two cups of strong black coffee, two slices of toast, and much bad language Your Humble Narrator surfed hither and thither along the Infobahn before finally zooming in on a bus-dashboard photo in the City Desk ABQ story, where I spotted an IC logo, which, hey presto — belongs to IC Bus, which claims to be “the market leader in school bus manufacturing,” though I’ve never heard of it. But Wikipedia has.
Drilling down through the IC Bus website in the faint hope of finding out where these rigs come from I find the following: “We build them right, right here at home. “IC buses are made in Tulsa, Oklahoma, using quality materials, and are tested to rigorous safety and efficiency standards.”
Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Go Furthur, ladies and gents; go Furthur.
Mad Blog Media 
PO’G: Well played, most informative and “educational”.
I particularly liked the following part of paragraph 2:
“…. e-buses began falling apart like big-box bicycles, and the understudy, New Flyer, suddenly faced a fraud complaint over CHARGES (JD Note: certainly applicable to electric vehicles, eh?) that it failed to hold up its end of a wage-and-benefits deal ….”
Truly shocking!! Dare I say electrifying!! 🙂
At $6.9 Million for 20 e-buses and related infrastructure, that’s a mere $345,000 per bus/infrastructure unit. Hopefully that infrastructure can service more than 20 buses so the costs/bus get greatly reduced.
Meanwhile, moving on to other “current” news issues ……… 🙂
That must be some infrastructure, yeah? I bet the garage makes some of our schools look sick. Which they already do. More than a few of them are those modular/container deals that look like hobo training camps.
AI isn’t even close to being here yet and already it sucks. Corporations are jumping to Stage 9 (Fire all humans) before Stage 2 (verify that the bots are remotely competent) has left the station.
Was the piece written by AI perhaps? Artificial intelligence seems to be an oxymoron to me. As the Tao says, put a little shit in water and you have shit water. Nobody wants to swim in shit water. Well, if the AI gets its information from the web, which has a lot of shit, then it produces shit journalism. But, like in the Seine, we don’t have much choice.
The reporter’s name, Mahlet Habteyes, doesn’t appear in the “Contact Us” section of the Journal website. And there’s no mugshot attached to the story, as with other reporters. Doesn’t mean Mahlet’s a bot, though. It does mean someone flunked J-school kindergarten.
“We’re buying some e-buses.”
“Yeah? Where you getting them? ’Cause, y’know, when the city tried that, it ended sort of, well, badly.”
Just saw this about the very subject. I thought the school bus piece writer should have said the school bus buyers are smarter than the city bus buyers.
https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-reporter-resigns-journalism-ed076e2f276d9811f3b9ba051a03b7ae
That’s a howler, innit? Gives you the feeling some hobo could wander in fresh from his boxcar and publish a bogus city-council report.
“Bugtussle Mayor Phil ‘Hill’ Billy promised today to process the local homeless population into tasty snacks for undernourished senior citizens.”
Sloppy journalism is not confined to AI. More and more often when I read stories in the NYT, WaPo, and CNN I am left asking, “yeah, but what about….” In other words, questions that should be asked but aren’t. Getting picky in my old age, I guess.
I do a fair amount of writing in my job, and since I have the time, I always provide drafts to select individuals so I can ask them what issue or question I’ve neglected to address. Maybe they should do that too. If the answer is “that’s what editors are for”, then I guess that tells you the quality of the editor.
As to the bus manufacturer location, the writers of the legislation specified that the electric school buses have to be made in the US in order to get the freebie. I mean, really. If it’s my tax dollars funding this, I want it going back to my fellow taxpayers.
Thanks Jon! I should have known that since it was federal money. And, I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence. That why I spent my COVID stimulus money on an American guitar amplifier, Henriksen, and an American guitar, Taylor.
I blame a lot of this sort of thing on the vanishing copy editor, the humble drone who whiled away the nights slouched at a terminal — stained coffee cup laced with cheap hooch nearby, a pack of Likely Strokes in a shirt pocket and a butt dangling from his unshaven face, a half-eaten cheeseburger drawing flies on the horseshoe-shaped copy desk — trolling though uncounted thousands of words in search of typos, AP style violations, passive voice, unasked questions, statements unsupported by fact, clumsy quotes in need of paraphrasing, outright falsehoods, and blithering idiocy.
“Those guys? Whadda they do? Geddem outa here! We gotta budget to cut.”
Pat’n your self on the back again are yee matey?
You have become old when you are sure that the days of the past are better than the days of now. I see now what my Father was talking about.
It was the only way to get a pat on the back for a copy editor at The Arizona Daily Star back in 1980. Good newspaper, and a bump in earnings for Your Humble Narrator, but the newsroom was stiff with Young White Guys for Reagan, my immediate supervisors were fascist assholes, and the copy desk had a revolving door. One potential hire was offered a job but declined, saying he’d rather work at a truck stop in Kingman.
I should’ve followed him there. I knew I’d made a horrible mistake after just a couple months on the job, and when my dad died I decided that was a good excuse to jump before I got pushed. So I waited until the holiday bonus checks were issued, took mine straight to the nearest bank and cashed it, then came back and gave notice.
It was a good thing I spent my nine months in Tucson cultivating a lovely tan whilst ogling coeds at the University of Arizona pool. After some months of scouring the West Coast for work I wound up taking a job at the Gazette-Times in Corvallis, Oregon, where the sun was largely a rumor.
Saw a big Frito-Lay box truck out making deliveries. All electric Ford. Driver said if company tried to take it away from him he’d quit. Only had it a month and of course he’s only hauling snacks but kids don’t weight what a load of refrigerators do so the buses should do ok. Several schools back this way have solar fields
I’m seeing a lot of e-vehicles of all types lately. Me, I’m still rockin’ the 2005 Subaru Forester. Just 152K on the odometer. I might consider a new one if I could get it for free and it came with a five-speed manual.
“You’re either on the bus or off the bus.”
On the nosey!
Good day Hurben! How are things down there? Too cold to ride?
Hi PoB,
not too cold to ride but unfortunately a few health issues have me off the bicycles for a while, (as soon as I find my warranty card, God is going to get a stern email from me, OurFather@heaven.com), otherwise all good, my company closed down our workshop & moved it out to the other side of Auckland but offered us redundancy, which I took so that I could focus on the afore mentioned health issues for the rest of the year.
Hurben, I hope you’re getting a hammerlock on those health issues, especially the ones that keep you off the bike. A two-wheeler may not be a panacea, but a nice ride always solves a number of my own issues, which are usually mental, surprise surprise. …
I had the bus option for a few years but decided the adventure of walking to school was a lot more interesting.
We were fortunate. In Ottawa school was walking distance from home (a little brisk in winter, but we were a one-car family). On Randolph AFB the same setup prevailed, only hotter; much, much hotter. I didn’t start taking the bus until seventh grade, which meant a brand-new school, grades seven through 12, a goodly distance away.
In Bibleburg the elementary, junior high and high schools were all an easy walk or bike ride, with Mitchell High School being just a hair over a mile from home. And yes, the school was named for William L. Mitchell, the air-power advocate, for whom the B-25 medium bomber was named. My ould fella flew one a time or two during World War II, a.k.a. “The Big One” (h/t Archie Bunker).
Since I hear that New Mexico leads the league in truancy, I wonder if these e-buses will be just the trick to getting all of our kiddos to go to school every day. Yes, I am kidding. This seems like a massive boondoggle to me. If we haven’t figured out how to get kids to stay in school, why is spending all these bucks on e-buses more important than, say, hiring a few more of what we used to call truant officers.
Whatever.
And that name, Mahlet Habteyes. At first I thought you were spoofing us, kinda like that Pulitzer Prize winner, Heywood Jablowme. But no, a real person. Hottie, too!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahlet-habteyes
Looks like she manages to keep busy, hey? Sheesh. And they say all the Youngs want to do is lurk in Mom’s basement and play video games.
By 2026, all the trucks that do deliveries from our warehouse 30 miles away will be electric, and the load weight they carry is huge. Many of the stores are 100 miles away, so double that for the round-trip, with heavy loads, so they can definitely do the job for a lot less money (after buying the cabs, that is). Buses really are a no-brainer. Three hundred something $K is pretty much the norm I think. Hopefully, the people running the depot will understand how to charge them regularly and can keep them serviced. Also, there’s a lot less service required for anything electric. In theory, should save dollars down the road a few years. The tech is way way better than it was ten years ago.
We’ve been driving BEV’s since 2017, and own 2, both starting with the letter “T” and ending in “a.” Will never go back to the gasoline.
Did your outfit retrain its drivers and mechanics to handle the new electric jobbers? Does less service mean fewer wrenches at the depot? I always wonder how these Great Leaps Forward land for (or on) the working stiff.
At newspapers the steady advance of technology meant that a copy editor — who once edited copy, hence the job title — was suddenly doing it all, editing copy, writing headlines and cutlines, laying out pages, fitting copy and art to the space available, sending the pages to the electronic typesetter, etc. The number of jobs eliminated on the production side was staggering. And then the headsmen came for the copy editors and the situation is as we see it today. Streamlined? To be sure. Improved? Your mileage may vary.
No e-vehicles here at El Rancho Pendejo. Neither of us drives enough to justify the investment. I have the ’05 Forester and Herself has a 2011 Honda CR-V, both barely broken in. I shudder at the thought of a new vehicle of any sort.
You must mean Trumplas correct?
Those Model S’s sure are purdy though.
I considered an EV, but decided against it since we drive less than 4K miles a year. So, we bought the second highest MPG vehicle available, a Corolla SE Hatchback. We have been getting 35/45 MPG city and highway respectively. The impacts from lithium mining or extraction are the fly shit in my pepper. The long term answer, I think, is less cars not electric cars.
To me, going to All Lithium All The Time is just another form of exploitation. We already see the “Do it to Julia, don’t do it to me, do it to her” effect taking place. No one wants their back yard ripped up, so it will happen in places like South America or next door to your favorite Rez. Like you, I’d like to see fewer cars and trucks, not more of them all seeking the magic bullet.
And since we are retired and don’t drive much, getting a new e-car is just a waste of resources. I go up to LANL on the motorcycle when I do go, and the two wheeler gets 57 mpg even if I thrash it.
Maybe Patrick can clue me in about the Duck City, but a lot of the school buses I see here in Fanta Se and formerly, in Bombtown, were often practically empty, with Mom and Dad driving Dick and Jane to and from school in the family gas guzzler. I see this bus thing as not exactly a cost/effective solution unless we go back to the Olden Daze when cars on K-12 campuses were rare and we all walked, biked, or took the Big Yellow.
The other day I’m motoring down Comanche en route to Christ only knows where and I come up on a school where the parents’ cars are lined up around three sides of the campus rectangle, completely erasing (wait for it …) the bike lane. Sigh.
PO’G: As an erstwhile wannabe faux copy editor (moi), I thought surely you’d answer the obvious question: “Did they all have their engines off and windows open so as to save gas/energy?” It was only 100F there the past few days and forecast to remain the same for a few more days/months. 🙂
and now for something completely related to the subject being discussed:
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/shimano-di2-wireless-hacking/
Yes, I remember those days of pulling a pair of wire cutters out of my jersey pocket, leaning over in the pack and snipping the cable of another racer. Boy would they be mad!
Yeah, I saw that at The Verge yesterday. A colleague and I were discussing the possibilities.
“Be fun to lock ol’ Remco Everclear into the 53/11T on L’Alpe d’Huez.”
“On the MTB you could lock out the suspension, make the dropper post go up and down … great fun.”
Yikes. A dropper post suddenly extending as you get air off that big jump.
Big air, and then bigger air. Like the ejection seat in James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5.
So much for having to throw a frame pump into someone’s front wheel, eh?
As the sage POB says “The long term answer, I think, is less cars not electric cars.”. Yea verily but as others note the chit’lins are being picked up from school by more and more and more cars. Even when bussed from their sub-d, I see cars lined up to transport the kids only a few mere blocks back home from the bus stop. Sure, some of sub-d’s don’t have sidewalks which is a fekking crime of it’s own. Going electric is an environmental balancing act but I’m in full favor of making the move. I mean for chrissakes what does one jet fighter cost? One day of paying the secret service teams to protect nitwits? My baby solar field is not hurtin nobody but the utility company who BTW, is happy to have any of my excess juice. The whole fossil fuel deal here in the USA is as outdated as the Erie Canal the way we bring oil in to the US (yes we still do) and pipe it all over hell and back. Sum total- there is NFW the fossil fuel industry pollutes less than going electric if solar and wind are ramped up. Ok Herb…get down of your hind legs…..
Drill baby drill is the same as burn baby burn to mother earth. The ocean’s temperatures are in record territory again, but higher than the science community models predicted. They are not sure why. This uncertainty disturbs me with multiple tipping points, where climate change accelerates, already in play.
Well, let me just say this about that.
If you hacked Remco’s bike and locked him into the top gear on L’Alpe, the way he’s riding now, he’d probably just go faster.
Herb and Khal, indeed it would be nice if the parents taking their kids to school went down and bus riding went up. Two factors prevent prevent that. One, we all live too far away from each other, making population density low and transport distances high. Until mass urban re-engineering happens to eliminate that it’s just wishful thinking. Two, parents are usually busier than a one-armed paper hanger and busing is hard to fit in the schedule if it isn’t right there in their laps. Sure, all the kids on our block here in York Pee-Ay take the bus, but the bus stop is at the end of our block. Easy peasy. For them.
I spent a few weeks in Berlin this spring when school was still in session, and stayed in one of those big-ass residential buildings that Erich Honnecker put up in the East during the heyday of the GDR. Lots of kids. No school buses and no one driving their kids to school. Population density was high, and the elementary school was three blocks away. Plus Germans subsidize extended parental leave, so the parents pretty much just walked their kids to school, and could afford the time to do so. Once the kid hit middle school it was “take the tram, kid”. And they do.
Re the school bus infrastructure, a fair amount of the project to get it up and running for a school district is getting the recharging in place. It doesn’t do any good to get an e-bus if you can’t charge it. And school districts (understandably) aren’t electrical experts. So the fed program includes support to get that worked out as well. Once that’s in place, its as easy as you think it is. Plug it in overnight and cut your bus maintenance budget back but there isn’t as much to go wrong or wear out.
Jon that is interesting and shows what’s possible. I mentioned that several schools here now have solar fields. And they certainly have plenty of rooftop surface area. So they can go a long way in juicing up those buses. And hopefully the cost of EV anything (car, truck,bus) will come down out of the stratosphere. My granddaughter has to be picked up from school since the sports and other extracurricular stuff means no bus available. She’d ride her mom’s ebike but the roads home are busy and loaded with shitty drivers. Plus hard to carry that damn French horn…. Yes living a few blocks from school would be the answer.
My two doors away neighbor who I hung out with a lot, Charlie Kratzat, lugged his french horn back and forth on the school bus. We used to hear him practicing at home–I think someone once called Game and Fish thinking there was a wounded deer in the back forty.
Imagine rearranging the United States so that everyone lived within a short stroll of work, school, shopping/services, and home. A thermonuclear war should do the trick.
The Life of Brian is 45 years old today. Where did that time go?
Also today, “Animal Farm” was published (1945); “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis was released (1959); and the People’s Front of Judea (not to be confused with the Judean People’s Front, splitters!) really hated the Romans. A lot (33).