North Texas commuters will soon be powered by domestic natural gas. Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) made the commitment to spend $217 million to acquire as many as 452 30-foot and 40-foot coaches, which will be delivered starting in 2013. The order will make Dallas home of the nation’s largest fleet of natural-gas powered buses.
DART serves 13 North Texas cities via bus and train service; it shuttles more than 220,000 passengers per day across a 700-square-mile service area. Board chairman William Velasco said his vote on Tuesday is one of the best he’s cast at DART.
“This is one of those game-changing decisions that affects all of North Texas,” Velasco told the Dallas Morning News. “Cleaner air is better air, and this helps clean the pollutants out of the North Texas region.”
Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert was an enthusiastic advocate for natural-gas buses, saying the greener reputation of natural gas made it a better choice. “It is not just about branding the city as a green city,” said the mayor’s chief of staff, Chris Heinbaugh. “He cares very much about easing this country off of oil, and not just from an environmental aspect. He looks at it from a national security standpoint, too, and that is why he feels so passionately about this and why he worked so hard to get DART to consider buying the CNG buses.”
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