Austin Independent School District (AISD) is located in Central Texas, encompassing more than 230 square miles. AISD is the fifth largest school district in Texas, and serves approximately 86,000 students at 124 schools. Recently, I talked with Austin ISD Transportation Director, Kourosh Hafezizadeh to discuss his first year of incorporating 6 propane-powered school buses into his fleet. Keep reading to learn how it’s going!
Currently, AISD’s runs 6 propane-powered school buses and 491 diesel-powered school buses. They transport over 3,960,000 student passengers annually with an annual school-bus mileage of 7,468,865 miles. AISD’s current annual usage of propane is 12,214 gallons. They currently pay $1.89 per gallon for propane and $3.12 per gallon for diesel. Since this is AISD’s first year using propane school buses they have no real annual fuel savings to compare to diesel at this time. AISD has two refueling facilities, which hold 1,000 gallons of propane each at each location which qualifies them for federal tax credits.
Big thanks to Kourosh Hafezizadeh, Austin ISD Transportation Director for providing information concerning his fleet! I hope the first year running propane shows you good results and I look forward to hearing how your second year turns out!
