Officials with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and rabbittransit in York, Pennsylvania, welcomed the commonwealth’s newest public compressed natural gas (CNG) station at a ribbon cutting on June 15. The new facility is the second public CNG station Love’s Trillium CNG designed, built and maintains for numerous transit authorities in Pennsylvania as part of a public-private partnership (P-3) PennDOT awarded to the company last year.
“CNG is clean transportation fuel. Not only will it help reduce our carbon footprint, but it will help reduce our maintenance costs as well as create jobs in Pennsylvania. We couldn’t be more pleased to be a partner in this initiative in bringing public-private fueling stations to the Commonwealth,” said Richard Farr, rabbittransit executive director.
The P-3 project will provide CNG to more than 1,600 buses at transit agencies across Pennsylvania. rabbittransit has one CNG bus, and eight additional CNG buses will be delivered next month. The P-3 project benefits the public by providing cleaner air to the community and consumers with more public CNG facilities. According to the Alternative Fuels Data Center, the new station at 415 N. Zarfoss Drive is the second public CNG facility in York.
“We are pleased to work with Trillium CNG on bringing a CNG fueling station under our P-3 arrangement to transit agencies across Pennsylvania, including here in York,” said Toby Fauver, PennDOT’s deputy secretary for multimodal transportation. “This innovative program will help foster the use of this cleaner-burning fuel that will make a difference for air quality while helping transit agencies save money through lower fuel costs.”
The new station in York was primarily built to meet the needs of rabbittransit’s growing fleet of CNG buses, but is also open to the public 24/7. The station provides service to vehicles of all sizes, including light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks. Six of the 29 facilities in the P-3 project will be open to the public. The first public facility opened in April in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, at the Cambria County Transit Authority. Another private facility for Mid Mon Valley Transit in Donora, Pennsylvania, opened this month.
“We’ve been excited about this partnership since before entering into the design stage, and it’s great to see everything coming to fruition at these station openings,” said Bill Cashmareck, managing director of Trillium CNG. “Our goal is to help companies meet their sustainability needs at a competitive cost, and it’s great to know this partnership benefits so many transit authorities, as well as other consumers.”