Pittsburgh's cleaner air and school bus worries of GASP

What about school buses?

In June, Pittsburgh Public Schools entered into new contracts
with the school bus carriers they use. The contracts
included language where the carrier agrees to only use buses
that are 2007 or newer, or if older they must be equipped
with diesel particulate filters and closed crankcase ventilation
systems. In combination, these devices greatly reduce
diesel particulate emissions, thus decreasing student and
driver exposure to diesel pollution. Great news, right? Yes,
except the district actually had similar language in place in
previous agreements. Some school bus companies hadn’t
been providing newer or retrofit buses as promised and the
school district wasn’t enforcing the cont–ract. How can we
trust the situation will improve this time around? Right
now, we are ascertaining how many new or retrofit school
buses are serving Pittsburgh, and we are encouraging fleet
owners to take advantage of competitive funding programs
to clean up their buses if they still need to.
More updates to come as we continue to follow these two
efforts intended to minimize diesel emissions in the city.

See the Fall 2016 issue of GASP's newsletter, the Hotline, available online as a PDF:
http://gasp-pgh.org/wp-content/uploads/hotline-2016fall-web.pdf