When Community Service Commission needed two vehicles to take volunteers into Los Angeles, they agreed to wait until later this year for the hybrid versions of the desired models.
UCLA Fleet Services, which owns 1,112 vehicles valued at $7 million, is a transportation resource available for both students and staff members and is working towards improving sustainability of UCLA-owned vehicles.
Fleet Services already encourages student organizations to use Flexcars if they need vehicle transportation for only a portion of the day, said Renee Fortier, director of Transportation Services.
“We also encourage the use of other alternative modes when people don’t really need to have vehicles, like bicycling, walking, public transit,” Fortier said.
The departments that use fleet vehicles include Housing and Hospitality, Facilities, Hospital, Transportation, Communications and Technology Services.
Several vehicles are used by academic and administrative departments, and a motor pool of roughly 50 vehicles exists for rental to university-sponsored events.
The vehicles have life spans ranging from 36 to 96 months, depending on their application and mileage, said Sherry Lewis, associate director for Fleet and Transit.
Vanpools, due to their high mileage and the long distances they cover, are replaced about every four years.
Of all these vehicles, 34 percent run on alternative fuels that include bio-diesel, propane and compressed natural gas. The university’s hybrids, electric vehicles and flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on either gasoline or a blend of up to 85 percent ethanol, also fall under the “clean fuel” category.
According to Fortier, UCLA is working on a three-year plan running until the 2008-2009 fiscal year that aims to increase the number of clean-fuel vehicles to half of the overall fleet. This could mean up to a 25 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions.The plan also proposes a 10 percent reduction in fleet size over the same time span ““ Lewis said she is in the process of moving departments with low mileage on their vehicles toward car share with other low-mileage departments.
Though a hydrogen-fueling station project proposed two years ago fell through, Fortier said Fleet Services is in talks this year with Housing and the Department of Chemical Engineering to convert waste oils from dining facilities into bio-diesel.
The university currently has two compressed natural-gas stations, an unleaded-fueling station, and is waiting for a flex-fuel station to open in Brentwood.
The university also purchases a small amount of bio-diesel and propane. $1.3 million of Fleet Service’s projected budget of $7.7 million is spent on fuel alone.
The rest of Fleet Services’ budget is broken down into maintenance, which costs $2.3 million a year; parts, which cost about $700,000 a year; and all other expenses, which include salaries, operating and infrastructure costs, and commercial rentals, which cost $3.4 million. California already has the strictest emissions laws in the nation, and if the state wins its lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, automakers would be required to begin making vehicles more environment-friendly by model year 2009, with the aim of cutting emission levels by 30 percent by 2016.
If passed, the new regulation would affect UCLA “to some degree,” said Lewis.
“As a state entity, we are governed by state and federal regulations ““ everything at the state and federal level trickles down to us. It just depends on how it is interpreted for the university,” she said.
As for the fleet’s long-term sustainability goals, a sustainable transportation plan is coming out of Fleet Services’ parent Department of Transportation, but Fortier cautions that long-term goals can fluctuate depending on new technology.
“Overall, the university has been pretty aggressive already in setting goals. The Sustainability Policy from the UC Regents (has some) very aggressive goals in there for Fleet (Services) in particular,” she said.