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A remote sensing system for carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon vehicle emissions, devised by Prof. D. Stedman's group at the University of Denver, is being evaluated at the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) in Toronto. The system was first checked to compare its readings with on-board emission measurements of vehicles as they passed a test point. Since then, it has been operated routinely over several months to measure the emissions of employee and MTO vehicles entering the site and records have been maintained for approximately 1000 vehicles that come in regularly. About 40 of these were tested on the MTO chassis dynamometer using the hot start and stabilized portion of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)/Transport Canada urban test cycle.

Much attention has been paid to the emissions from diesel transit coaches culminating in the 1990 EPA bus standard.(1)* A primary pollutant that has been singled out for advanced controls is diesel particulate. In order to meet the low levels of particulate emissions in the standard, diesel particulate filters are one of the principle methods being studied. To this end, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications of Ontario and Engine Control Systems Ltd. entered into a cooperative development program for a low cost, simple and retrofitable diesel particulate control system.(2) The paper outlines the various components of the system and the results of field testing.

A comparative evaluation of six transit bus engines (three diesel, one propane (LPG), one natural gas for vehicles (NGV), and one methanol) has been performed. The purpose of the program was to assess the exhaust emissions and fuel consumption of current state-of-the-art large alternative fuel engines. Engine dynamometer test work was performed at the Ontario Research Foundation (ORF) which allowed a detailed comparison of several alternative-fuelled engines versus their diesel counterparts. Test data includes steady-state brake-specific fuel consumption maps, torque and horsepower curves. Transient performance, fuel consumption and emissions information came from computer-controlled engine dynamometer runs of the Advanced Design Bus (ADB) test cycle as defined by US DOT/Booz. Allen & Hamilton (1)*. Engine speed and load requirements were determined from data supplied by Detroit Diesel Allison (DDA) for their 4 0 foot urban transit bus with Canadian DDA 6V71 NA (CSS) engine.