PARTA breaks ground for first CNG station in Portage County

Compressed Natural Gas from Crystal Smith on Vimeo.

Words by Alex Cossin and Miranda Kiner

KENT, OHIO- Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority (PARTA) broke ground on Portage County’s first Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) station on March 8, 2018. 

The new station, located at 2000 Summit Road in Kent, Ohio, will fuel PARTA’s new CNG bus fleet arriving 2018. The new CNG station will be open to the public as well. 

PARTA received $830,000 to replace two 10-year-old diesel transit buses with two new buses powered by CNG. 

The money was a part of $15 million in grants that were awarded statewide to replace or refurbish aging diesel engines with newer and cleaner diesel technology or alternative fuel technology. The specific grant is named the Ohio Diesel Emissions Reduction Grant program. 

The two new CNG buses provided by grant money will be the seventh and eighth buses awarded to PARTA by the state of Ohio through clean emissions programs. PARTA will start with two CNG busses in 2018 and move to a total of eight CNG busses by 2020. The total of eight new buses will retire eight old diesel buses and maintain PARTA’s current 32 bus fleet. 

“In the future we’ll be looking at possibly expanding into getting additional CNG vehicles, so we’ll be looking at additional grant funding for those as well,” said Katherine Manning, PARTA’s director planning.

Manning said she expects to see a return on this investment within a few years.

“We’re only going to have two busses to start with and then we’re going to start selling gas to the public so it will take a little bit until fleets start using our station,” said Manning.

According to PARTA, switching to CNG reduces health-harming CO₂ pollutants by 30 percent and lowers greenhouse emissions by over 70 percent. PARTA also states that CNG prices are consistently lower than diesel and that 98% of fuel used by PARTA CNG vehicles will be produced in the U.S. 

Brian Trautman, Director of Operations and Facilities at PARTA, said the grant money not only provides buses, but new hardware for the company as well. The new hardware comes in the form of CNG bus friendly workspaces, featuring a new lift, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide sensors and a new HVAC unit that can dump all of the air within the workspace in the matter of seconds if there were to be a CNG leak. 

The two new busses come equipped with fire detection and fire suppression systems. 

“People worry about the gas being volatile, and it is,” Trautman said. “The tanks nowadays are almost bulletproof. You could literally shoot them with a bullet and it won’t penetrate these tanks. There a steel tanks that are wrapped with the same technology that are in steel-belted tires, and then that’s encased in another polymer.”

The busses have also been updated for driver comfort. 

“I took a lot of the suggestions from the drivers over the years and incorporated them into the specifications,” Trautman said. “Nicer seats, just better things that makes the driver’s day in the cockpit more ergonomic.”

Trautman also said that the grant money pays for PARTA’s technicians 300 individual hours of training to work on the new CNG buses. The Kent Fire Department has already been trained on how to handle CNG incidents, according to Trautman.  

While CNG is better for the environment, the infrastructure development has been slow. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are only 931 public CNG Stations nationwide, compared to 17,567 electric charging stations and roughly 160,000 petrol stations. There are currently 40 public CNG filling station in Ohio. 

 

Trautman explained that until CNG’s infrastructure is more developed, PARTA is reluctant to power all of their buses with CNG. If something were to happen to their pump, they would need to send their busses to the nearest CNG station to fuel, which is in Akron. 

“The environmental benefits are the most significant,” said Claudia Amrhein, General Manage and Secretary-Treasurer of PARTA. “(CNG) is a cleaner running fuel. It’s quieter. Our busses will run more efficiently and be a lot more quiet than you see on diesel busses.”

Amrhein is looking to make the CNG station a “one-stop shop” by making the current bus wash CNG friendly so fleet owners can come fuel up, get their fleet washed and have service done all in one spot. 

“I think we’ll see a return, at least environmentally, right away,” Amrhein said. “I think that once we get our mechanics up to speed on maintaining them we will see economic benefits as well as environmental benefits. It’s a greener choice and it’s domestically produced.”

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PARTA replaces two busses with ones that run in CNG and will open their new filling station to the public #JMCRPP

— Miranda Kiner (@Randi_K96) March 14, 2018

This summer, PARTA will be the first in Portage County with a compressed natural gas station! Soon, half their busses will be running on natural gas! #JMCRPP #goPARTA

— Crystal Smith (@crystalsmith22) March 14, 2018

PARTA opens first CNG station in Portage County. #jmcrpphttps://t.co/wefPN2iVo1

— Alex Cossin (@Adubbed) March 15, 2018