Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. By way of background, Calgary Transit is a division of the City of Calgary. We currently operate just over 1,000 buses in our fleet at the moment, all of which are powered by diesel engines. Our fleet varies in age from some brand new buses that we've just

Transport committee  We haven't had any formal discussions with any of the gas suppliers yet, but we comfortably think a five- to ten-year window should be achievable. That's compared to diesel right now, where really all anybody is willing to lock in to is a six-month contract and possibly up to a y

Transport committee  For the smaller study we did of around 200 buses when we were going to convert a facility, we did do a detailed costing of that, and the payback period of that was around six years.

Transport committee  That was based on a fairly conservative fuel model as well. If the natural gas prices stay as depressed as they are today, or possibly even lower, then obviously that period becomes shorter again. We haven't done that study for the bigger facility, of a new facility, plus 400 bus

Transport committee  In the initial study it did include the capital cost associated with retrofitting an existing building. As I say, we haven't done a detailed costing study of a new facility yet because we are still working with P3 Canada to see exactly how much our capital costs would be with a n

Transport committee  Hamilton already operates a natural gas fleet, but that's an older fleet. There have been significant changes in the CNG technology from about 2007 when Cummins Westport developed a new engine, which made the vehicles more comparable in terms of performance, in terms of reliabili

Transport committee  I was a little unclear about who had jurisdiction over it. There was little guidance on a CNG maintenance facility of the scale that we were looking at. Natural gas is available in houses and homes and the building code is quite clear, but it becomes different when you go to a la

Transport committee  We fuel our own vehicles. We use our own fuelling stations, but we need to have things like high-pressure gas lines brought to our premises. These things are currently not there, so there are infrastructure costs.

Transport committee  Yes, and there are high-pressure gas lines as well, which are sometimes difficult to route through residential areas. There may be coding against that, but we're not sure. We know that high-pressure gas lines are needed. Otherwise, at the fuelling facility, you need to build exte

Transport committee  I can't speak too much for the residential areas, but in terms of larger vehicles, if we I look at the U.S., they have significant federal support for new green vehicle procurements. I believe at the moment that green buses in the U.S. are funded by the federal government to the

Transport committee  I don't see any barriers there right now actually. That's certainly not anything we've experienced. In terms of the buses, there are only really four major bus manufacturers in North America, two of which are in Canada, so that's been okay for us.

Transport committee  We expect to take delivery of our first CNG vehicles at the tail end of this year.

Transport committee  Probably 18 months. We want to run it through two winters to make sure we address our cold weather concerns.

Transport committee  Our original study was on 200, but we are building a facility that can cope with 400.

Transport committee  That's our estimate right now, yes.