Budapest reduces the soot emission of buses thanks to CAAG

Between February and October 2015, Clean Air Action Group (CAAG) has requested from the Budapest public transport company, BKV the repair of more than 70 intensely fuming buses. In several cases BKV could significantly decrease the harmful emission of the buses concerned. All these improvement took place thanks to the passengers who answered the call of Clean Air Action Group, and notified it when they smelled exhaust fumes inside the buses, or when they saw buses on the street emitting a cloud of soot.

BKV regularly gave a brief information to CAAG about the actions they took in response to the notifications by the passengers through CAAG. They wrote for instance:

"We examined the engine of bus with licence plate BPI-132. We adjusted the preload of the fuel injection pump, now the bus does not fume during acceleration."

"We adjusted bus BPI-134, I send the fume value measured after the adjustment. The fume inside the bus was due to a defect in the bellows. The bellows is repaired."

"After the replacement of the air filter, the fumes of the two buses disappeared."

"We decided that repairing bus BPO-381 is uneconomical, so we definitively scrapped this bus."

Unfortunately, in certain cases repairing could not bring any result, because the vehicle was in such a bad condition:

"In response to your admonition, the engine was adjusted on the vehicle, but unfortunately we could not achieve any significant improvement. The Euro II Perkins engine of the IK405 buses were renewed several times, and they should have been scrapped long time ago. In the absence of financial resources we have not had such an opportunity, and the midi bus procurement and service tenders were also unsuccessful."

"In spite of the difficulties we are optimistic. Thanks to the notifications by the citizens, soot emission significantly decreased in most cases" – said Péter Lenkei, Head of CAAG’s Environmental Advisory Office. "We expect further reports from citizens about soot emitting buses."

The exhaust gases of diesel engines are proven to be carcinogenic, they cause many premature deaths, for instance through the diseases of the cardiovascular system. Thus CAAG considers it very important that the buses on the streets of Budapest should pollute the environment the least possible. Budapest Municipality tries to solve this by purchasing new buses, but significant results could also be obtained by the proper maintenance of the present buses, and by retrofitting them with particle filters. For example the public transport company of Berlin retrofitted all their buses.