The largest city in Arizona just announced that it will modernize its mass transit fleet to run on cleaner-burning domestic natural gas. Earlier this week, the Phoenix City Council approved plans to purchase 120 buses that will run on compressed natural gas. The new buses carry a total price tag of $61 million and should arrive beginning this fall and into next spring.

“Because of that transition to this new type of fuel, we’ll be able to save a net four million dollars,” said Matthew Heil, spokesman for the city’s Public Transit Department.

The decision by the Phoenix City Council is yet another example of the trend by municipal fleet managers to switch from costlier imported diesel to cleaner burning domestic natural gas.

In 2011, the board of Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) voted unanimously to authorize the purchase of as many as 452 30-foot and 40-foot coaches that will be powered by compressed natural gas.

Delivery of Dallas’s new natural gas-powered fleet will begin later this year and continue through 2015.

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