(The following story by Don Hammonds appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website on March 16, 2010.)
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — The green activities of transportation companies with ties to the Pittsburgh area are on display from one end of the globe to the other — including Vancouver, the site of the Winter Olympic Games.
Bombardier Inc. of Canada, which employs hundreds of people at a plant in McKeesport, kept people moving around the games by operating Flexity streetcars as a free service, which is continuing until March 21.
The streetcars operate between Granville Island and the Olympic and Paralympic Village in Vancouver.
The demonstration project offered Vancouver residents and visitors a chance to experience modern streetcars as a sustainable public transportation option, company officials said. By cutting down on the number of cars, buses and other vehicles travelling to and from the island, traffic congestion was reduced and air quality improved, officials said.
“All of this has been a great marketing initiative for us, and having the streetcars complements what we are doing as a company,” said Kathryn Nickerson, of Bombardier Transportation Division.
Wilmerding-based Wabtec Corp.’s MotivePower subsidiary has designed two locomotives that are both environmentally sensitive and fuel savers as well.
A new ultra low emissions switcher locomotive has a multi-engine design that company officials say saves 35 percent or more on fuel, and reduces emissions.
MotivePower also has developed a passenger locomotive that produces emissions more than 60 percent cleaner than those from the locomotives being replaced. The company already has received orders for 12 of the new locomotives from the Virginia Railway Express, a commuter railroad serving suburban communities in northern and central Virginia.
Wabtec’s product list also includes an oil-free compressor for locomotives and subway cars, “silent” brake pads used on European high-speed trains to reduce noise, an electronic train management system and electronic braking to improve safety and reduce fuel usage.
“The common thread to these products is really based on our mission statement, which is to provide products and services that help our customers improve their safety, productivity and efficiency,” said Wabtec spokesperson Tim Wesley. “In particular, many of these products are lighter weight, which reduces fuel usage, or they are designed to reduce scrap.”
Company officials make the case that the freight rail and passenger transit industries themselves are green in the sense that they offer alternatives to consumers and businesses at a time when there’s an emphasis on making economically prudent decisions.
According to the Association of American Railroads and the American Public Transportation Association, trains can move one ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel, and one intermodal train hauls the equivalent of 280 trucks, while public transit takes passenger vehicles off the road.
Not all of the innovations coming out of companies involved in the transportation business are specifically related to transportation, an indication of how important diversification can be.
Green innovations are taking Ansys to the depths of the sea.
The Canonsburg-based maker of simulation software and technology that has been used in everything from automotive and aircraft development to improving water treatment systems also has designed devices that can generate renewable power from the motion of the sea, technology now is being used by Green Ocean Energy Ltd., a United Kingdom-based renewable energy company.
The devices are called the Ocean Treader and Wave Treader, and they are designed to bob on the surface of the North Atlantic while waves cause attached floating arms to move up and down to provide power to on-board generators. The resulting electricity is sent back to shore via underwater cables, company officials said.
“The idea has captured the imagination for centuries, but until now the business justification has not been sufficient to move such projects forward. Significant engineering hurdles must be overcome to develop efficient, reliable and economical wave-powered electrical generation systems that could be deployed on a mass-production basis,” according to an article written last year for Ansys Advantage journal by George Smith, managing director, and Tamas Bodai, analyst engineer, Green Ocean Energy Ltd., of Aberdeen, Scotland.
Each machine can produce 500 kilowatts of electricity, which is enough to power 125 homes. Ansys officials said a group of 30 devices could provide 15 megawatts of power.