01-02-2007 ISLAMABAD,
Jan 5: The twin cities have taken their first step towards a dignified and environment-friendly
urban transport system with the introduction of flashy seagreen clean-burning
CNG buses cruising the roads. 
The
private company has so far brought only two HIGER buses on the road for trial
run, which are now running on Route 1, traveling between Saddar (Rawalpindi) and
Pak Secretariat (Islamabad) via Murree Road. These
are the first fully dedicated and imported CNG buses in the country. Some experimentation
had been done in other cities like Karachi and Lahore by using vehicles powered
by hybrid engines, but it came a cropper. Initially, the company would be operating
a fleet of six buses, each having a capacity for 100 passengers. These
buses could be followed by several hundred more in the coming months, an official
of the company said when asked if the buses were efficient to create a real impact
on the agonizing and tormenting transport system in the twin cities dominated
by the privately operated vans. Natural
gas buses produce significantly less harmful pollutants than comparable diesel
buses, including 40 percent less nitrogen oxides (a primary precursor of smog),
90 percent less particulates (soot), and up to 85 percent less air toxics. One
natural gaspowered transit bus displaces almost 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel
in one year.
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