By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
January 7, 2014

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — The Kansas City, Mo., Fleet Services Division officially opened its fifth high-speed-fill compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station this past December.

The station, located at 5350 Municipal Ave., near Front Sreet and Chouteau Trafficway, has two dispensers with two hoses each that are dedicated for city vehicle use and one pump with two hoses for public use. The $2.1 million station will be open 24 hours a day, seven-days-a-week and accepts major credit cards. The station was built and will be operated by Clean Energy Fuels and is expected to reduce the city’s fuel costs by approximately $250,000 a year.

Fleet Manager Sam Swearngin said the city has invested for nearly 20 years in its alternative vehicle program. These vehicles reduce air pollution and save millions of gallons of fuel annually. The city uses approximately 620,000 gallons of CNG annually, which is 26 percent of the total fuel used.

Fleet Services, a division of the General Services Department, has long been a leader in the use of alternative fuels, and has been ranked in the top 50 fleets in North America the last several years. The program was also recently named North America’s premier government fleet at the North American Green Fleet Awards Forum in Sacramento, Calif. Swearngin said the first place designation is the result of foresight, collaboration, and successful economic planning to meet the challenges of operating a diverse fleet of more than 3,300 vehicles.

“This station will serve City fleet vehicles as well as vehicles from the public,” Swearngin said. “We have many requests and inquiries from the public about access to a CNG station and this station will allow citizens to have lower fuel costs, cleaner emissions and the ability to more easily fuel their CNG vehicles.”

This station will also allow us to fill heavy duty trucks which were not available as CNG when the city began its CNG program more than 20 years ago.