Page 16 - sept-oct 2018

As American as Baseball,

Apple Pie and … Public

Transit

Nothing is more American than baseball, apple pie and the freedom to
hop in a vehicle and go on a trip
One of the facilitators of our ability to come and go freely is our public
transportation system According to APTA, American’s took more than 10 billion
trips in 2017 and that public transit is a $68 billion industry that employs more
than 420,000 people This is the good news The bad news is more than 45 percent of Americans don’t
have access to public transportation As funding for local transit-related initiatives appears on ballots in
your community, make sure you support with a “yes” vote
The reality is investment in public transit drives economic growth in your community Whether it’s
more jobs, more revenue to local businesses, or even higher home values, all of the facts support that a
region with a robust public transit system is far better off than one without
Related to our world of alternative fuels, public transportation helped reduce gasoline con-
sumption by more than 4 2 billion gallons in 2017 The leadership in public transit are constantly looking
for ways to further improve service, reduce cost and lessen the environmental impact in their communi-
ty. One approach is to adopt propane autogas vehicles for their paratransit fleets.
More than 19,000 buses, trucks and vans
equipped with the ROUSH CleanTech propane
autogas fuel system have been deployed across
the U S and Canada Of those, more than 1,500
operate in the transit industry, with the majority
being for paratransit use
With significantly lower operating costs,
propane autogas vehicles help agencies stretch
their dollars further Historically, propane autogas
costs about 40 percent less than gasoline and 50
percent less than diesel per gallon, and reduces
MASTER DISTRIBUTOR
maintenance costs due to its clean-burning prop-
erties Operating on propane autogas instead
of diesel removes the complexity and cost of
after-treatment measures It all adds up to faster
return on investment
Propane autogas vehicles also are easier
on the environment According to a University of
California Riverside study, diesel-fueled medium-
and heavy-duty vehicles are the primary source
of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in almost every
single metropolitan region in the United States
Propane autogas is naturally much lower in NOx

16 Alabama Propane Gas Association | September / October 2018