Natural gas-fueled vehicles carve out niche in Big Apple

N.Y. Times News Service

NEW YORK -- City sanitation trucks use it. Some Transit Authority buses use it. A few yellow cabs use it. New York City is riding a boomlet in vehicles that run on clean-burning compressed natural gas.

There are 2,300 compressed natural gas cars, trucks and vans in the city, according to Brooklyn Union Gas Co., up from a few dozen in the late 1980s. In the last year, it has become possible, in many parts of the city, to drive up to a compressed natural gas pump and fill the tank.

Those who follow the field are not predicting that ordinary consumers are about to begin buying compressed natural gas-fueled cars in droves, but they say that the vehicles have carved a solid, rapidly growing niche. Thanks to market forces and initiatives by the city, they say, New York is likely to become a center of that market.

"I think New York is poised to be on the leading edge of this," said Lizabeth A. Ardisana, an alternative-fuels specialist at Ford Motor Co.

Compressed natural gas vehicles remain a tiny slice of the automotive pie in New York and nationwide, with an estimated 66,000 in use. Even advocates will not rule out the possibility that technological changes might give the edge to another alternative fuel, like propane or electricity, or that car buyers might resist the vehicles.

The appeal of compressed natural gas is that vehicles using it emit one-tenth as much of several pollutants, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, as their gasoline-powered counterparts do, with equal performance.

The city's Department of Environmental Protection and the Taxi and Limousine Commission are pushing owners of the city's nearly 12,000 yellow cabs to switch to compressed natural gas, and Ardisana said that their program could, by itself, make New York the nation's biggest market for the cars.

Natural gas-powered cars cost about $3,000 more than gasoline- burning ones, so the city, using a federal clean air grant, is paying the difference for anyone who buys a natural gas-powered taxi. It is also paying for conversions of existing cabs, which can cost as much as $5,000. The city will let a cab fueled by natural gas remain in service for five years, two years more than other taxis, giving owners an incentive to change fuels.

There are just 15 compressed natural gas taxis operating in the city, but city officials expect the number to reach 600 by the end of next year.

David Golub, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection, said the city is considering ways to get other industries to convert. The city, which subsidizes private commuter bus lines, might be able to put pressure on them to use compressed natural gas, he said, and it could give tax incentives to other companies that switch.

While vehicles powered by compressed natural gas cost more than their gasoline-run counterparts, the fuel costs about one-third less per mile, and they require less maintenance. As a result, they make most sense for heavily used vehicles, particularly in cities, where most compressed natural gas filling stations are, said Richard A. Kassel, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"We're on the cusp of something big happening there," he said. "I don't think we're on the verge of seeing individual car owners driving natural gas vehicles, not yet, but we are on the verge of seeing a lot of big fleet operators doing it."

There are a few such fleets already. Brooklyn Union has almost 1,000 vehicles, and the city has 700 in several departments.

"Our experience with them has been great," said Jennifer Jiles, a spokeswoman for United Parcel Service, which has 490 compressed natural gas trucks nationwide, 30 of them in New York.She said the company plans a steady, sharp increase in those numbers.

The Transit Authority, which has lagged behind other major transit systems in the country in moving away from diesel power, has just 34 compressed natural gas buses, but transit officials say the authority may buy more than 100 of them later this year.

New York is making strides in overcoming what may be the biggest hurdle of natural gas-powered cars, which is the shortage of pumping stations. Without a lot of places to fill up, people and companies are reluctant to buy vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas. But until there are large numbers of the vehicles, there will not be the demand to support many filling stations.

In the last few years, Brooklyn Union and Consolidated Edison have opened more than 20 natural gas fueling stations around the city that sell to the public, and a handful of traditional service stations have installed natural gas pumps. That puts New York behind only Atlanta among American cities in the number of compressed natural gas stations, analysts say, and the utilities say the number will grow as the number of vehicles does.

The city has its own natural gas pumps, as does the Transit Authority, and Christopher Lynn, chairman of the taxi commission, said the commission will establish filling stations at Kennedy and La Guardia airports to serve cabs. Lynn also announced last week that he had reached a tentative agreement with the state of Texas, a major natural gas producer, to provide an abundant and cheap supply of the fuel to the city's market.

Ford started making compressed natural gas trucks and vans in late 1994 and began producing sedans that use the fuel this year. It expects to produce 2,000 to 3,000 compressed natural gas vehicles overall this year. General Motors does not make any compressed natural gas vehicles, and Chrysler will stop making them, but Ford officials say they are committed to continuing the program.

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