Community tour highlights Harlem bus depot’s sustainable design
Community members were treated to a tour of the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot in Harlem on Oct. 18 to see the future of sustainable design.
The bus depot is one of the first public transit facilities to incorporate sustainable design practices and the first to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The tour, which came as part of the nonprofit organization Open House New York’s annual weekend initiative, displayed the depot’s sustainable features, including the solar heating wall, green roof, and rainwater collection tank.
Open House New York was founded in 2001 to allow New Yorkers to experience the architecture of sites usually barred to the public. This year, around 200 sites across the city, including the Highbridge Water Tower and the Mount Morris Fire Tower, were available for viewing.
The bus depot was chosen as an Open House New York site to educate the public about sustainability.
“In addition to being a good example for the industry to follow, we try to give good examples of environmentally sensitive, sustainable practices,” said tour leader Thomas Abdallah, the deputy vice president and chief engineer for the New York City Transit Authority.
The bus depot is one of 28 in the city. According to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, it can hold more than 150 diesel hybrid buses. The city first started testing hybrid buses in the late 1990s before introducing a larger fleet in 2004.
The depot’s solar heating wall is primarily used in the winter. Warm air travels through holes in the wall and into the building, warming the space and saving two to three percent in energy, according to Abdallah.
The warm air is taken outside the building in the summer through what Abdallah calls a summer bypass. As warm air is sucked into the building, it rises, insulating the roof and leading to savings in terms of cooling.
The design was inspired by the Renewable Energy Lab’s solar heating wall in Colorado, said Abdallah.
“I wanted to do something special from a renewable energy point of view,” he said.
The building also features a 65,000-square-foot vegetation roof. Also known as a green roof, this style of roofing also insulates the building and absorbs water, carbon dioxide and other air pollutants like particulate matter.
Particulate matter, or PM 2.5, is a pollutant imperceptible to the naked eye that can cause health issues like asthma and heart disease when inhaled.
Central Harlem, where the bus depot is located, has the third-highest asthma emergency department visits in the city, according to the NYC Environment and Health Data portal. (It ties with Highbridge and Morrisania just across the Harlem River.)
PM 2.5 is flushed into the engineered soil of the green roof when it rains, removing it from the air.
“Anytime you can reduce the amount of particles that are in the atmosphere, it’s a health benefit to the community,” said Abdallah.
Sedums were planted on the green roof due to their hardiness. They thrive in mountainous regions with little soil and water.
“What is the roof if not a kind of an artificial hill?” said Yekaterina Aglitsky, environmental management system director at New York City Transit.
The roof is also used to collect rain, which is recycled to wash the buses in the depot. The rainwater is stored in a 50,000-gallon tank, reducing the amount of water used by the facility and that ends up in the city’s sewer system. The buses are washed using nontoxic, environmentally safe soap.
Martha Lineberger, 39, came from Brooklyn to take part in the tour. She has been participating in Open House New York for about eight years.
“It’s a great way to see the city and how it functions,” Lineberger said. “I feel like I appreciate things more when I understand how much work and thought and whatever has gone into it.”
The Jamaica Bus Depot, currently under construction in Queens, will follow the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot’s sustainable design model.
The city aims for its bus fleet to be zero-emissions by 2040. This plan requires electric buses, 60 of which have already been introduced in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The switch will be painless for the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot: it is already a good fit for electric buses, which require overhead charging, thanks to its high ceilings.
“When we move forward with the electric buses, this building will be one of the first that gets them,” Abdallah said.
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