Abstract:

Emissions from traffic cause poor urban air quality in cities all over the world. In public transport networks, replacing internal combustion engine buses with electric buses provides an opportunity to improve air quality. Hence, many bus network operators are currently looking for the best transformation plan to integrate battery electric buses into their fleet. Ideally, this plan also considers installing necessary charging infrastructure to ensure a fleet's operational feasibility. Against this background, the authors introduce an integrated modeling approach to determine a cost-optimal, long-term, multi-period transformation plan for integrating battery electric buses into urban bus networks. This model connects central strategic and operational decisions. The authors minimize the total cost of ownership and analyze potential reductions of nitrogen oxide emissions. The results are based on a real-world bus network case study and show that a comprehensive integration of battery electric buses is feasible and economically beneficial. Analyzing the impact of battery capacities and charging power on the optimal fleet transformation shows that medium-power charging facilities combined with medium-capacity batteries are superior to networks with low-power or high-power charging facilities.