Trillium, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), and New Castle Transit Authority (NCTA) celebrated the opening of the commonwealth’s newest compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station in New Castle, Pa.

The 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 a public-private partnership (P3) contract PennDOT awarded to the company in 2016. The P3 project will provide CNG to more than 1,600 buses at transit agencies across Pennsylvania, including 11 at the New Castle location. The agreement also brings 23 additional private CNG facilities to the commonwealth.

“The New Castle Transit Authority is thrilled to be part of the P3 program that will provide our authority and the public with access to a more cost-effective and cleaner burning fuel,” said David Richards, GM for NCTA.

The station is open 24/7 and features three CNG dispensers. It will primarily serve NCTA’s fleet of CNG buses, but it’s 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.

Larson Design Group of Williamsport, Pa., is assisting with the construction of the locations. The next public facility at Indiana County Transit Authority is scheduled to open this fall. Additional public facilities are scheduled to open at transit authorities across Pennsylvania in Lackawanna and Erie Counties in later phases of the project.