WILKES-BARRE, Pa. -- Some new energy efficient buses are on the to Luzerne County and riders are relieved to hear it.
For years, Evelyn Brislin has gotten from here to there by taking buses run by the Luzerne County Transportation Authority, also known as the LCTA.
Soon, the buses she takes may be new and run on compressed natural gas or CNG.
"I've ridden some of these buses when I was younger, and I hear the rattling. I've seen parts of the door fall off. We need as many new buses as we can get,” Brislin said.
The LCTA says some of these buses are more than 15 years old. Riders are happy some of the older buses are going to be replaced.
“A lot of them don't have any shocks. A lot of them have a smell,” Donald Taylor of Wilkes-Barre said.
“The more that we think about nature and how we're affecting it, the more consciously we reduce our carbon footprint, which means we might be able to stay on earth a little longer,” Brislin said.
The LCTA just received $1.7 million in federal grant money to buy four new CNG buses. That is on top of the three CNG buses it plans to buy with other grant money. All these new buses will serve a growing number of riders.
“Over one point two million a year ride our buses every year and that's been climbing. The past few months or so, the numbers have gone up,” LCTA Executive Director Norm Gavlick said.
The Luzerne County Transportation Authority expects some of these new CNG buses to be on the road by late summer.