Meeting Focuses on Regional Biofuel Public Transportation

By David Nolt, 10-29-07

With the hopes of creating a network of public biofuel transportation systems throughout the Greater Yellowstone Area—particularly between Livingston, Bozeman and Gardiner—local government officials and citizens held a community meeting at the Livingston Public Library on Friday, October 19, 2007.

The City of Livingston and Park County are currently involved in a Transportation Advisory Committee with David Kack of the Western Transportation Institute and Bozeman’s Streamline bus service. The committee’s goal is to provide a commuter bus service between Livingston, Bozeman and Gardiner.

The meeting included a panel of transportation and biodiesel experts from around the region: Lisa Ballard of Current Transportation Solutions; Michael Wackerly of the START Bus system in Jackson, Wyoming; Kimball Leighton of the Yellowstone Biodiesel Company; Dan Alexander, vice president of Story Distributing; and Jan Brown of the Yellowstone Business Partnership. A driver of the historic Yellowstone National Park yellow buses also provided rides to those attendance. The park’s biofuel system is now being implemented in virtually every national park in the nation.

Livingston City Commissioner Patricia Grabow organized the meeting, and Sandy Shuptrine, coordinator of the Yellowstone-Teton Clean Energy Coalition, moderaterd. The Yellowstone-Teton Clean Energy Coalition is a non-profit with the stated mission, “to decrease/displace the use of petroleum in transportation, improve air quality through reduced harmful emissions and improve U.S. energy security.” Shuptrine emphasized the purpose of the meeting was to inform and create a dialogue that could help lead to action. “We’re not here to sell you anything,” Shuptrine said.

David Kack opened the panel by recapping the history of the Bozeman-based Streamline and Skyline bus services. The new service started with $380,000 of local funding, which leveraged about $500,000 of federal grant funding. The Streamline launched in April 2006 and has had well over 100,000 riders to date, proving the system’s viability.

“We see that people will ride public transportation in Bozeman,” Kack said.

The Skyline, which has also served about 100,000 riders to date, is an offshoot of the Streamline serving Big Sky year-round. Kack said, though he has no illusions of the bus system fitting into the majority of people’s schedules, he still sees the system working and even expanding. “We don’t expect that services will work for everyone all the time, but we hope at least it will be an option,” Kack said.

Lisa Ballard, who is also on the Streamline advisory board, spoke about her experience with the brand new shuttle system in Glacier National Park. With major construction happening on Going-to-the-Sun Road for at least the next six to eight years, locals and business owners in and around the park fought to keep the road open. Working with the National Park Service, the groups organized an experimental shuttle system. Organizers predicted around 800 riders a day, but ridership far exceeded the their expectations with averages of around 2,000 riders a day; providing adequate service for the large numbers proved to be the program’s largest challenge.

Kimball Leighton explained the possibilities and challenges of providing large quantities of biofuels for the greater Park County area. Leighton and his wife produce their own biofuel for personal transportation in a Mercedes diesel, but Leighton recently put together a feasibility study for the Yellowstone Biodiesel Company to provide one million gallons of biofuel. Leighton hopes to primarily use locally grown camelina to produce the fuel.

“There are no more quality issues [with running biofuels in diesel automobiles],” Leighton explained. “Now it is the logistics of production.”

Leighton described biofuel production as a “new frontier,” though he admitted there are significant barriers to large-scale production today. “As we speak, it doesn’t pencil out on a commercial basis, but it can on a community basis,” Leighton said. “We can grow the oil seed locally, render, turn to biofuel and distribute locally.”

Michael Wackerly of the START bus system spoke to the challenges of running a successful public transportation system across state lines and federal transportation districts between Jackson, Wyoming and Driggs, Idaho. Providing insurance for the system was the toughest hurdle, but Wackerly said the insurance bug is worked out and the bus is seeing a steady rise in ridership.

Dan Alexander described Story Distributing’s strategy as “finding fuels and discovering distribution channels” to bring those fuels to the consumer market. Story distributes biodiesel from their Belgrade center, and Alexander says the company has experimented with various mixtures of biodiesel to find optimum blends. There is concern running B-100 (100 percent biofuel biodiesel) does not work in colder temperatures. Alexander explained, although B-20 (20 percent biofuel) is the “least intrusive blend,” cold-weather operability in higher biofuel blends can be addressed. Although it becomes more expensive for the consumer, Story can specifically blend biodiesel according to the weather. Many biodiesel users regularly run B-100 in un-converted diesel engines.

Jan Brown of the Yellowstone Business Partnership (YBP) said the 700,000 people living in the Greater Yellowstone Area want to be more connected, and she emphasized a transportation cooperative as one of the best solutions. A federal “seasonality” grant program recently awarded the YBP with a $150,000 grant, provided the YBP can provide $25,000 in matching funds. The grant includes transportation issues, and Park and Carbon Counties both applied for community block grants to help match the federal dollars.

Brown also presented on a proposed cellulosic ethanol plant in Shelley, Idaho. Iogen Biorefinery Partners, a Canadian company, recently received an important loan guarantee from the U.S. government to build the Idaho plant, which would utilize a new process that converts biomass into cellulose ethanol using a combination of thermal, chemical and biochemical techniques. If the plant is successful, Brown said it could possibly be a model for the region.

Those in attendance at the meeting asked a variety of questions to the panel, varying from providing passenger rail service to what it would take to make a commuter bus system between Livingston and Bozeman possible. Shuptrine said any transportation system in the area should emphasize linking the region, which would provide better options for providing vehicles, biofuels and specialized maintenance. All seemed to agree, although people in the region are spread across a wide and rugged area, all share similar reasons for living here, and all share a desire to become more connected in a more environmentally friendly way. With global warming and $90-a-barrel fuel looming, biofuel transportation systems are becoming more and more attractive, Kack said.

As for a passenger bus service between Bozeman, Livingston and Gardiner, those in attendance seemed to be waiting for someone to step up to the plate to take ownership of the service.

For other information on obtaining biofuels in Bozeman and Livingston, visit, Bozeman Biofuels and the Park County Biofuels Cooperative.

This story originally appeared in the Livingston Weekly.