Clean Energy to enhance L.A. Metro CNG stations

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has secured contracts totaling nearly $8.4 million from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) to upgrade four of Metro’s compressed natural gas (CNG) bus fueling stations.

Metro currently deploys America’s largest CNG-powered transit bus fleet. The agency’s 2,506 clean-burning CNG buses comprise 95 percent of its overall fleet and consume more than 30 million gallons of CNG fuel annually.

Over the next 18 months, Clean Energy will reconfigure and upgrade the CNG fueling station compressor equipment at four Clean Energy-operated Metro fueling locations. Metro secured grant funding for its CNG station upgrade project from the federal program created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Metro deploys buses on 191 fixed routes in a 1,433-square-mile service area in Los Angeles County. More than 9.6 million people — nearly one-third of California's residents — live and work in L.A. County. In fiscal year 2009, passenger boardings of Metro buses totaled more than 365 million.