If you pull up to the City of Richmond’s new gas station on Maury Street, bring your credit card — and a vehicle that runs on compressed natural gas (CNG). Not only does the new CNG station refuel the city’s fleet of CNG-powered garbage trucks, it is open to the public 24 hours per day.

The financial benefit of the clean-burning fuel is a $1.50 per gallon-equivalent savings in fuel costs as well as lower fleet maintenance costs. As a bonus to society, use of compressed natural gas reduces air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions and dependence on foreign oil.

The Maury Street refueling station owes its existence to a partnership between the city, the commonwealth of Virginia and the operator, Quarles Petroleum. Fredericksburg-based Quarles, which provides a range of fleet-fueling services, indicated plans back in November to open another facility “within a few months” near Dulles airport.

Bacon’s bottom line: This is probably a good thing. One of the barriers holding back the widespread use of compressed natural gas fuel is the lack of a refueling infrastructure. People won’t purchase a Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) unless they know they can refuel it. But no business wants to build refueling stations, which require more room for storage than gasoline stations, if no market yet exists for the product. Hopefully, a market will take root among operators of truck fleets like the City of Richmond’s and spread from there.

However, the city’s press release neglected to mention how much the refueling station cost to install or how much the city hopes to recoup in savings, so citizens have no way of knowing whether the project is generating a positive or negative Return on Investment. (I presume that there is a subsidy, or there would be no need for the state’s involvement.) Citizens have a right to know how much they are “investing” to help get a CNG infrastructure up and running. A little more transparency, please.

— JAB