The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania continues to roll out its CNG P3 Project which aims to construct fueling stations for the supply of Compressed Natural Gas to more than 1,600 public-transit buses at 29 sites. According to the PA Department of Transportation (PennDOT), eight stations were completed in 2017 and four have been opened in 2018. Station builder Trillium, PennDOT and New Castle Transit Authority (NCTA) celebrated the opening of one of those stations last week.
The NCTA facility is the third of six new public CNG fueling stations Trillium is designing, building and maintaining for numerous transit authorities in Pennsylvania as part of the public-private partnership (P-3) contract PennDOT awarded to the company in 2016. The agreement also brings 23 additional private CNG facilities to the commonwealth.
The station is open 24/7 and features three CNG dispensers. It will primarily serve NCTA’s fleet of CNG buses, but it is also open to the public, including light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks. During the ribbon cutting, officials demonstrated the ease of fueling with a truck provided by Columbia Gas.
“It’s been two years since Trillium and PennDOT entered the agreement to bring more CNG stations to transit authorities and drivers in Pennsylvania, and it’s great to see the hard work paying off,” Carson Hoyt, general manager of design-build services for Trillium, said at the ribbon cutting. “Together, we’re offering a clean fuel derived from an abundant local resource, and we’re giving consumers another option. It’s a real win-win for Pennsylvania.”
The next public facility, at Indiana County Transit Authority, is scheduled to open this fall. Two additional public facilities are scheduled to open for County of Lackawanna Transportation System and Erie Metropolitan Transportation Authority, before end of 2018 and in 2019 respectively.
Including public and private stations, four more will be built in 2018, six in 2019, one in 2020 and six in 2021 to complete the P3 Project.
Sources: Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and Trillium
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