Grant to Fund 7 City Buses Powered by Natural Gas

San Diego Transit Corp. is about to embark on an experiment that may lead to cleaner-running buses. The catalyst is a $1.3-million grant from the federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration that San Diego Transit will use to purchase seven buses powered by compressed natural gas.

The natural, high-pressure gas is less polluting than gasoline or diesel fuel. Officials hope that cleaner buses will encourage more people to leave their cars at home.

“We already feel that bus service is one of the major contributors of clean air because we get all those dirty automobiles off the road,” said Roger Snoble, president and general manager of San Diego Transit. “If we can take that black cloud away from our buses, we’ll be even more effective in helping to clean the air.”

The grant was announced Monday by Brian W. Clymer, head of the federal agency, at a meeting in San Diego of American Public Transit Assn., a nationwide organization of transit-system operators.

A request for bids to build the buses has already been published, and Snoble expects to have the buses on the road by mid-1991. The seven, 40-foot long buses will run on regular routes and will be evaluated over five years.

SDG&E; will build a compressed natural gas refueling station at San Diego Transit’s Imperial Avenue facility. The station will cost $460,000. SDG&E; will bear two-thirds of the building cost and San Diego Transit will contribute the rest.

The utility will sell the compressed natural gas at a price comparable to what the transit company pays for diesel fuel.

The new buses will be able to travel 400 to 500 miles without refueling and will travel up to about 55 m.p.h., about the same as with diesel fuel, said Jennifer K. Sansone, new products and services administrator for SDG&E.; An additional advantage to using natural gas is that it is a domestic resource, Sansone said.

San Diego Transit is one of the first transit companies to receive a an UMTA grant for the natural gas buses, Snoble said.

Transit systems, in Europe and Canada as well as Los Angeles and a private bus company in Brooklyn, also are experimenting with compressed natural gas as a fuel for buses, Snoble said.

“It is the way to go,” he said.