No abstract

In response to the worldwide environmental problem and fossil oil dependency concern, electric bus (EB) has emerged as a promising green transport to alleviate air pollution. However, there is no available method on how to quantify the environmental (green) performance of EB operational system that could provide proper guidance to the bus operators. Thus, this study aims to develop a green assessment and improvement framework for EB operational system which is capable of capturing bus noise, emission, and energy consumption level explicitly in quantifying the respective green index. To do this, the approaches of Gini Index, Analytic Hierarchy as well as Weighted-grading are employed accordingly. The resultant Green Performance Index (GPI) is vital not only to enhance the green performance of EB operational system, but also to tackle the needs and preferences of the bus operators in meeting the demand of passengers. By analysing a study area in Putrajaya (Malaysia), the findings show that the green performance of EB operational system would vary across numerous operational factors, including load factor, bus frequency, and bus type. The results also highlight that the green weightage of energy consumption emerges with the highest value (approximately 69%). Besides that, it was found that the improvement strategy of load factor increment is beneficial to improve the GPI of the bus operator, up to 37.9%. Concisely, it is anticipated that the developed approach as well as the resultant findings would yield useful insights especially to the bus operators to operate EB in a greener and better manner.

In accordance with worldwide environmental problems and fossil oil dependency concern, green mobility with electric buses is receiving increasing attention as an essential road transport. Environmentally, electric buses emerge as a promising solution in particular to alleviate the emission and noise pollution. Nevertheless, there is no available method on how to quantify green (environmental) performance of electric buses that could provide proper guidance to the bus operators. Therefore, this study aims to construct a green index assessment and improvement framework for electric buses by capturing bus noise, emission and energy consumption level explicitly. The proposed framework, which is capable of quantifying the green level of electric bus operations, plays a vital role in improving the green performance of bus operating system, by considering numerous operational aspects. In order to examine the applicability of the proposed approach, an illustrative case study, focusing on the electric bus operations of Putrajaya (Malaysia), is analyzed accordingly. The resultant findings show that the green performance of electric buses would be different at varying degrees, depending on various inter-correlated factors. It is anticipated that this study may reveal some beneficial insights for the bus operators to operate environmental-friendly electric buses feasibly.