After being in operation for two days, Ball State's hybrid-electric shuttle bus has encountered a few "tweaking problems," a university director said Thursday.
Bus drivers are having to get used to how the bus operates because its doors open differently, and it takes off differently from the normal gasoline fueled shuttle bus, said Sue Weller, director of Facilities Business Services and Transportation.
"It's a very sophisticated bus," Weller said. "It's a lot of technology."
The hybrid bus is a kneeling bus, she said, which means that the bus driver can lower the bus down for people to board. They have had some trouble making sure the back and front of the bus lower and raise at the same time.
The biggest difference in technology between the hybrid-electric bus, which uses a turbine and a battery to generate power, and the gasoline-fueled bus is the battery technology. The university is providing extensive training for the garage mechanics and sent mechanic Robert Apking to California where he will learn how to work with the bus, Apking's wife said. Mechanic Paul Price was also slated to go but said he became too ill to attend.
While the bus's battery has enough charge to run all day, the university is only using the bus from 7 a.m., when the shuttle systems starts, to 3:30 p.m. because that's when the garage mechanics go home.
The university has had the bus for only a little over a week and doesn't want to have any problems with the bus when there is no one on campus to solve it, Weller said.
"During it's initial inaugural week, we're just not taking any chances and driving it," she said. Weller expects the university to begin using the bus throughout the duration of the shuttle bus operating hours within a week or two, she said.
If the hybrid-electric shuttle works well for the university, it will purchase more, Weller said, although she doesn't know when that would happen.
"Our bus fleet is old," she said. "We have buses that were supposed to last seven years that are in their 15th year. We have to replace buses little by little. What we wanted to do was try to replace them with buses that were fuel-efficient and clean."
Lou George, service supervisor for facilities planning and management, said the hybrid's greatest benefit to the university is its environmentally friendliness.
"The biggest benefit of this bus is how little impact it has on the environment," George said in a press release. "And not just any environment either, but the hearth of campus -- the main corridor where most of students reside and walk to class."
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