Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, United States. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is bordered on three sides by the city of Los Angeles – Pacific Palisades to the north, Brentwood on the northeast, West Los Angeles on the east, Mar Vista on the southeast, Venice on the south; the Census Bureau population for Santa Monica in 2010 was 89,736. Due in part to an agreeable climate, Santa Monica became a famed resort town by the early 20th century; the city has experienced a boom since the late 1980s through the revitalization of its downtown core, significant job growth and increased tourism. The Santa Monica Pier and Pacific Park remain popular destinations. Santa Monica was long inhabited by the Tongva people. Santa Monica was called Kecheek in the Tongva language; the first non-indigenous group to set foot in the area was the party of explorer Gaspar de Portolà, who camped near the present-day intersection of Barrington and Ohio Avenues on August 3, 1769. Named after the Christian saint Monica, there are two different accounts of how the city's name came to be.
One says it was named in honor of the feast day of Saint Monica, but her feast day is May 4. Another version says it was named by Juan Crespí on account of a pair of springs, the Kuruvungna Springs, that were reminiscent of the tears Saint Monica shed over her son's early impiety. In Los Angeles, several battles were fought by the Californios. Following the Mexican–American War, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave Mexicans and Californios living in state certain unalienable rights. US government sovereignty in California began on February 2, 1848. In the 1870s the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, connected Santa Monica with Los Angeles, a wharf out into the bay; the first town hall was a modest 1873 brick building a beer hall, now part of the Santa Monica Hostel. It is Santa Monica's oldest extant structure. By 1885, the town's first hotel was the Santa Monica Hotel. Amusement piers became enormously popular in the first decades of the 20th century and the extensive Pacific Electric Railroad brought people to the city's beaches from across the Greater Los Angeles Area.
Around the start of the 20th century, a growing population of Asian Americans lived in and around Santa Monica and Venice. A Japanese fishing village was near the Long Wharf while small numbers of Chinese lived or worked in Santa Monica and Venice; the two ethnic minorities were viewed differently by White Americans who were well-disposed towards the Japanese but condescending towards the Chinese. The Japanese village fishermen were an integral economic part of the Santa Monica Bay community. Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. built a plant in 1922 at Clover Field for the Douglas Aircraft Company. In 1924, four Douglas-built planes took off from Clover Field to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of the world. Two planes returned after covering 27,553 miles in 175 days, were greeted on their return September 23, 1924, by a crowd of 200,000; the Douglas Company kept facilities in the city until the 1960s. The Great Depression hit Santa Monica deeply. One report gives citywide employment in 1933 of just 1,000.
Hotels and office building owners went bankrupt. In the 1930s, corruption infected Santa Monica; the federal Works Project Administration helped build several buildings, most notably City Hall. The main Post Office and Barnum Hall were among other WPA projects. Douglas's business grew astronomically with the onset of World War II, employing as many as 44,000 people in 1943. To defend against air attack, set designers from the Warner Brothers Studios prepared elaborate camouflage that disguised the factory and airfield; the RAND Corporation began as a project of the Douglas Company in 1945, spun off into an independent think tank on May 14, 1948. RAND acquired a 15-acre campus between the Civic Center and the pier entrance; the completion of the Santa Monica Freeway in 1966 brought the promise of new prosperity, though at the cost of decimating the Pico neighborhood, a leading African American enclave on the Westside. Beach volleyball is believed to have been developed by Duke Kahanamoku in Santa Monica during the 1920s.
The Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome is a National Historic Landmark. It sits on the Santa Monica Pier, built in 1909; the La Monica Ballroom on the pier was once the largest ballroom in the US and the source for many New Year's Eve national network broadcasts. The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was an important music venue for several decades and hosted the Academy Awards in the 1960s. McCabe's Guitar Shop is a leading acoustic performance space as well as retail outlet. Bergamot Station is a city-owned art gallery compound; the city is home to the California Heritage Museum and the Angels Attic dollhouse and toy museum. The New West Symphony is the resident orchestra of Barnum Hall, they are resident orchestra of the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Santa Monica has three main shopping districts: Montana Avenue on the north side, the Downtown District in the city's core, Main Street on the south end; each has personality. Montana Avenue is a stretch of luxury boutique stores and small offices that features more upscale shopping.
The Main Street district offers an eclectic mix of clothing and other specialty retail. The Downtown District is the home of the Third Street Promenade, a major outdoor pedestrian-on
Wilshire/Vermont station
Wilshire/Vermont is a heavy-rail subway station in the Los Angeles Metro system. It is located at Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, in Los Angeles' Mid-Wilshire/Koreatown District; this station is served by the Purple Line. As its name implies, Wilshire/Vermont station is located at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue; the station itself is to the east of the intersection, allowing diverging Red Line trains to head north underneath Vermont. A number of educational institutions, including Southwestern University and the Robert F Kennedy Community Schools, are located nearby. Above the station is the Wilshire Vermont Station mixed-use transit village development, a $136-million apartment and retail complex designed by the architecture firm Arquitectonica and developed by Urban Partners and MacFarlane Partners on land owned by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority; the development opened in 2007 and includes apartments, an adjacent middle school.
The property is managed by Greystar Real Estate Partners. The station is located where the Red Line and Purple Line converge on their way to Downtown Los Angeles; the station is designed with two platform levels: eastbound Purple and Red Line trains use the upper level, westbound Purple and Northbound Red trains use the lower level. The artwork at the station depicts typographic symbols designed by Bob Zoell; the letters on the pillars of the lower platform spell out "going by-by", what the red line and its patrons do when they zoom in and out of the station. Addition artwork at the station is the creation of Peter Shire; the Wilshire/Vermont station contains the two longest continuous escalators in the state of California (in fact, west of the Mississippi. Metro Local: 18, 20, 51, 52, 201, 204, 351 Metro Rapid: 720, 754 LADOT DASH: Wilshire Center / Koreatown In 2009, a sign listing the Wilshire/Vermont station was used in a Geico "It's So Easy A Caveman Could Do It" commercial featuring the song "Let Me Be Myself" by Three Doors Down.
Station connections overview
Sylmar, Los Angeles
Sylmar is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Known for its profusion of olive orchards, Sylmar can trace its past to the 18th century and the founding of the San Fernando Mission. In 1890 olive production was begun in a systematic manner; the Sylmar climate was considered healthy, so a sanitarium was established, the first in a series of hospitals in the neighborhood. There are fourteen public and eight private schools within Sylmar; the population of the Sylmar area was 3,500 in 1940, 10,000 in 1950, 31,000 in 1962, 40,000 in 1972, 41,922 in 1980 and 53,392 in 1986. By 2000, a "wave of immigrants and working poor" had enveloped Sylmar, Pacoima and Sun Valley, resulting in a housing shortage for lower-income people; the 2000 U. S. census counted 69,499 residents in the 12.46-square-mile Sylmar neighborhood—or 5,579 people per square mile, among the lowest population densities for the city. In 2008, the city estimated that the population had increased to 79,614.
In 2009, the Sylmar Chamber of Commerce estimated that the population was 90,000 residents. In 1980 Sylmar was predominantly white, 36 % Latino. Twenty years in 2000, the neighborhood was considered "moderately diverse" ethnically within Los Angeles, with a high percentage of Latinos; the breakdown in 2000 was Latinos, 69.8%. Mexico and El Salvador were the most common places of birth for the 36.7% of the residents who were born abroad—an average figure for Los Angeles. In 2000 the median age for residents was 28, considered young for county neighborhoods. In 2000, renters occupied 29.2% of the housing stock, house- or apartment-owners held 70.8%. The average household size of 3.6 people was considered high for Los Angeles. The percentage of married women was among the county's highest. There were 3,607 veterans, or 7.7% of the population, average for the city of Los Angeles and the county. A study by four graduate students from the University of Southern California in 2005 stated that: Sylmar in the 1970s and 1980s was a rural, predominantly white, non-Hispanic community, whose residents focused on creating a place centered around equestrian activities.
Today, the dramatic influx of residents has serious consequences for a community that has too little housing stock, too few employment opportunities, overburdened public facilities and decaying public infrastructure systems. The median yearly household income in 2008 dollars was $65,783, considered average for the city. San Fernando became a city in 1874, leading to the naming of the unincorporated land surrounding San Fernando as Morningside. In 1893 the area was named a fusion of the Latin words for Sea of Trees. Around 2000, some local residents proposed a plan to rename the northwest portion of the district as Rancho Cascades; the name change was approved in 2018. Sylmar has been nicknamed "The Top of Los Angeles." The foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains at the north slope of the San Fernando Valley were seen as "an unattractive and worthless waste" before 2,000 acres of them were transformed in the late 1890s by the Los Angeles Olive Growers Association. One observer recalled that the land had been "a mass of ill-looking chapparal and chemisal" before it was planted with olives.
In 1893, a group of Illinois businessmen purchased from the trustees of the Maclay ranch either 1,000 or 2,000 acres east of the railroad tracks on San Fernando Road just south of Roxford Street and in 1894 began planting olives trees on up to 1,700 acres. Experts were brought from France to supervise the work. Calling themselves the Los Angeles Olive Growers Association, they built a packing plant and sold olives under the Tyler Olives label changing to the Sylmar Packing label. Sylmar's olives became noted throughout the state for purity. Chinese pickers were hired to harvest the crops, up to 800 U. S. gallons of olive oil a day were produced. The pickling plant was located on the corner of San Fernando Road. By March 1898 about 200,000 trees had been planted, by 1906 the property had become the largest olive grove in the world. One source stated in 1981 that it was the "Fusano family" who built a headquarters building for the olive association on Roxford and San Fernando in 1902 and that the first packing plant was built in 1909.
The trees began bearing fruit in 1912. The first groves were planted with Nevadillo Blanco and Manzanillo olives; some Sevillano and Ascolano varieties were planted for extra-large fruit. During the picking season in the early 1900s, an extra force of 300 Japanese was employed and housed in a village of tents. In 1927 the packing plant, built in 1910, employed some five hundred workers during its busiest season, November through January; the oil was pressed from the fruit, allowed to separate from the fruit's water content drawn into 12,000-gallon concrete tanks lined with glass and set deep into the ground to avoid a change in temperature. Over time, the plant expanded its activities, bringing in figs and watermelon rind from the San Joaquin Valley for processing. In 1904 the Sylmar brand olive oil won first place at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St, Missouri, in 1906 at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Oregon, in 1915 at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
In 1922, the controlling interest in the Los Angeles Olive Growers' Association, held by the estate of F. D. Butterfield, was bought by Charle
Commerce, California
Commerce is a city located in southeast Los Angeles County, United States. The population was 12,823 at the 2010 census, up from 12,568 at the 2000 census, it is bordered by Vernon on the west, Los Angeles on the northwest, East Los Angeles on the north, Montebello on the east and Bell Gardens on the south, Maywood on the southwest. The Los Angeles River forms part of its southwestern boundary, the Rio Hondo separates it from Downey. Commerce is served by the Long Beach and Santa Ana freeways, as well as the Metrolink commuter rail service at the Commerce station, it is referred to as the "City of Commerce" to distinguish it from the common noun. In the 19th century, the area was part of Antonio Maria Lugo's Rancho San Antonio, its conversion to an industrial area began in 1887, when the Atchison and Santa Fe Railway built its main line through the area. The ranch remained intact until Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker, reputedly once the wealthiest woman in Los Angeles, sold some of it around the turn of the 20th century.
The Atchison and Santa Fe Railway and Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad both were built through what would become the community, as was the Pacific Electric Railway's Whittier Line. By the 1920s, factories had arrived. In the late 1940s, industrial leaders banded together with residents in the communities of Bandini and Laguna to encourage commerce, they changed the name to match that goal. The city was incorporated in 1960 to prevent neighboring cities such as Vernon and Los Angeles from annexing industrial land for tax revenue and elected its first city mayor, Maurice Quigley. In the 1970s and 1980s, Commerce negotiated the turbulent period of deindustrialization that hammered nearby cities such as South Gate and Norwalk, maintaining much of its manufacturing and goods-distribution base and converting former industrial land to lucrative commercial uses; the most notable example of this phenomenon is the Citadel outlet mall, which occupies the site of a former tire factory. The owner of the Citadel, Steve Craig, hosts an annual Clean Up Commerce Day and enlists other businesses to work with the city and volunteers in beautifying a specific area of the city.
With a major rail yard within its borders, Commerce has benefited from the huge expansion in international trade traffic through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, albeit at the expense of severe air pollution caused by truck congestion on the Long Beach Freeway. Chrysler had an assembly plant in Commerce from 1930 through July 1971 located at 5800 S. Eastern Avenue and Slauson Avenue, called Los Angeles Assembly, it was closed at the end of the 1971 model year, as Chrysler decided to triple-stack its transport trains for the 1972 model year. Commerce boasts a large aquatic center, Commerce Aquatics that has trained a number of successful water polo players, including four-time Olympic medallist Brenda Villa. Commerce is the site of Williams Ranch, on, the swimming hole that the Sleepy Lagoon Murder of Jose Diaz took place in 1942; the Sleepy Lagoon swimming hole was located near Slauson and Eastern Ave. Commerce is located at 34°0′2″N 118°9′17″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.5 square miles, over 99% of it land.
The 2010 United States Census reported that Commerce had a population of 12,823. The population density was 1,961.4 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Commerce was 6,930 White, 96 African American, 161 Native American, 140 Asian, 9 Pacific Islander, 4,886 from other races, 601 from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12,114 persons; the Census reported that 12,753 people lived in households, 2 lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, 68 were institutionalized. There were 3,382 households, out of which 1,751 had children under the age of 18 living in them, 1,693 were opposite-sex married couples living together, 708 had a female householder with no husband present, 308 had a male householder with no wife present. There were 248 unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, 23 same-sex married couples or partnerships. 559 households were made up of individuals and 326 had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.77. There were 2,709 families.
The population was spread out with 3,824 people under the age of 18, 1,458 people aged 18 to 24, 3,581 people aged 25 to 44, 2,590 people aged 45 to 64, 1,370 people who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31.2 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.7 males. There were 3,470 housing units at an average density of 530.8 per square mile, of which 1,619 were owner-occupied, 1,763 were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.0%. 6,631 people lived in owner-occupied housing units and 6,122 people lived in rental housing units. According to the 2010 United States Census, Commerce had a median household income of $48,729, with 16.5% of the population living below the federal poverty line. As of the census of 2000, there were 12,568 people, 3,284 households, 2,686 families residing in the city; the population density was 1,913.6 inhabitants per square mile. There were 3,377 housing units a
Big Blue Bus
The Santa Monica Big Blue Bus is a municipal bus operator in the Westside region of Los Angeles County, that provides local and bus rapid transit service in Santa Monica and adjacent neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Express service is provided to Downtown Los Angeles and Union Station; the impetus for the creation was a fare increase on the Pacific Electric interurban trains between Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines was founded on 14 April 1928, launched its first route, choosing a blue livery. Culver CityBus was founded in 4 March 1928, making it the second oldest municipal bus line in California and the oldest public transit bus system still operating in Los Angeles County. San Francisco Municipal Railway began streetcar service 28 December 1912. Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines kept its base fare at 10 cents for a long time; the Santa Monica bus connected with the Los Angeles Railway streetcars at Pico and Rimpau Boulevards in the Mid-City section of Los Angeles. That historic terminus point has become an important transit center in Los Angeles because it is the point where thousands of bus riders along Pico Boulevard must transfer to continue their trips eastward to Downtown Los Angeles or westward to the Westside.
The Big Blue Bus is considered one of the best bus services in the Los Angeles area. The system won the American Public Transportation Association’s Outstanding Transportation System award in 1987, 1992, 1997, 2000 and 2011; the Big Blue Bus did not raise its regular fare above 50 cents until 2002. In contrast, most public bus lines in California were charging fares of a dollar or more well before 2000. There was no monthly pass until August 2010 except for the EZ Pass, unlike other EZ Pass agencies, Metrolink fare media are not accepted. However, allowing for the inevitability of traffic delays on weekday afternoons, the Big Blue Bus system provides frequent and convenient service to most neighborhoods in its service area. Many routes serve UCLA; the Big Blue Bus was one of the last transit agencies using the GMC New Look buses. Big Blue Bus received the last New Looks built; the last one built, #5180, was driven off the property in May 2013 after being donated to the Museum of Bus Transportation in Hershey, which preserves the bus.
It was the first transit agency in the State of California to use the Grumman-Flxible Model 870 advanced design transit buses equipped with Lift-U wheelchair lifts beginning in 1978, the third customer after Atlanta's MARTA, the Connecticut's Department of Transportation's CT Transit's order of these buses. These buses never experienced the same chronic structural problems that plagued these early vehicles that were sold to other transit agencies; these were the first production buses built with wheelchair lifts before ADA became law of the land in 1990. For 20 years until December 1999 Santa Monica Bank ran a series of humorous ads on the back of the buses. Examples include "wrinkled is beautiful. In large denominations", "Go invest, young man", "Was it his eyes? His lips? His jumbo CD?" and "After 20 years on the bus, we've reached our stop". The campaign ended as the bank was absorbed by U. S. Bank; the system was started by former Brentwood resident Rudolph F. Brunner, who sold the system thinking it wouldn't amount to any more than a few dollars a week.
On November 20, 2012, a Big Blue Bus turned left in front of an oncoming motorcyclist, which resulted in the 25-year-old man's death. The accident occurred at 10:33 a.m. at the triangular intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Marquez in the Pacific Palisades. Only buses are allowed to make the left turn, a maneuver, determined to be too dangerous for other vehicles. On June 7, 2013, Bus 4057 of Big Blue Bus was among several vehicles fired at during a thirteen-minute killing spree that left six people dead, including the gunman, four others wounded. Three women suffered minor injuries aboard the bus, one from shrapnel-type injuries and the other two from injuries unrelated to the gunfire. Two dozen people were inside the bus at the time of the shooting; the attack on Bus 4057 marked the first time a Big Blue Bus came under attack by a gunman in its 85-year service. Big Blue Bus operates 14 local routes, 3 Rapid routes, 1 express route in Los Angeles County; the most famous Big Blue Bus is the one rigged with a bomb in 1994's hit movie Speed.
Driving through Los Angeles at rush hour, the bus has to keep its speed over 50 mph or the bomb on the bus will detonate. Two humorous slogans Santa Monica Bank used on Big Blue Buses appeared in the film; the bus operator in the movie is called the Santa Monica Intercity Bus Lines, a fictionalized version of the Big Blue Bus's official name, the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines. More tellingly, the bus in the film is a General Motors "New Look" bus, introduced in 1959 but kept in prominent and active service by Santa Monica until early 2005, long after most other American cities had retired the retro-looking bus. In another effort to differentiate the movie's bus from any real-world bus, the headsigns on the Speed bus display: 33 DOWNTOWN | VIA FREEWAYHowever, number 33 buses are operated by Metro, not Big Blue, run on Venice Boulevard, not the Santa Monica Freeway; the closest thing to the movie bus's routing is Santa Monica's number 10 express route. The bus number was 2525, not within any equipment number range operated by the real company at that time.
It should be noted that at the time the movie was released, Santa Monica's GM New Look fleet were the Canadian-built versions with wheelchair lifts.
Los Angeles County, California
Los Angeles County the County of Los Angeles, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of the U. S. state of California, is the most populous county in the United States, with more than 10 million inhabitants as of 2017. As such, it is the largest non–state level government entity in the United States, its population is larger than that of 41 individual U. S. states. It is the third-largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a Nominal GDP of over $700 billion—larger than the GDPs of Belgium and Taiwan, it has 88 incorporated cities and many unincorporated areas and, at 4,083 square miles, it is larger than the combined areas of Delaware and Rhode Island. The county is home to more than one-quarter of California residents and is one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the U. S, its county seat, Los Angeles, is California's most populous city and the nation's second largest city with about 4 million people. Los Angeles County is one of the original counties of California, created at the time of statehood in 1850.
The county included parts of what are now Kern, San Bernardino, Inyo, Tulare and Orange counties. In 1851 and 1852, Los Angeles County stretched from the coast to the border of Nevada; as the population increased, sections were split off to organize San Bernardino County in 1853, Kern County in 1866, Orange County in 1889. Prior to the 1870s, Los Angeles County was divided into townships, many of which were amalgamations of one or more old ranchos, they were: Azusa El Monte Azusa and El Monte Townships were merged for the 1870 census. City of Los Angeles Los Angeles Township Los Nietos San Jose San Gabriel Santa Ana. For the 1870 census, Annaheim district was enumerated separately. San Juan. San Pedro. Tejon When Kern County was formed, the portion of the township remaining in Los Angeles County became Soledad Township According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 4,751 square miles, of which 4,058 square miles is land and 693 square miles is water. Los Angeles County borders 70 miles of coast on the Pacific Ocean and encompasses mountain ranges, forests, lakes and desert.
The Los Angeles River, Rio Hondo, the San Gabriel River and the Santa Clara River flow in Los Angeles County, while the primary mountain ranges are the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains. The western extent of the Mojave Desert begins in the Antelope Valley, in the northeastern part of the county. Most of the population of Los Angeles County is located in the south and southwest, with major population centers in the Los Angeles Basin, San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Valley. Other population centers are found in the Santa Clarita Valley, Pomona Valley, Crescenta Valley and Antelope Valley; the county is divided west-to-east by the San Gabriel Mountains, which are part of the Transverse Ranges of southern California, are contained within the Angeles National Forest. Most of the county's highest peaks are in the San Gabriel Mountains, including Mount San Antonio 10,068 feet ) at the Los Angeles-San Bernardino county lines, Mount Baden-Powell 9,399 feet, Mount Burnham 8,997 feet and Mount Wilson 5,710 feet.
Several lower mountains are in the northern and southwestern parts of the county, including the San Emigdio Mountains, the southernmost part of Tehachapi Mountains and the Sierra Pelona Mountains. Los Angeles County includes San Clemente Island and Santa Catalina Island, which are part of the Channel Islands archipelago off the Pacific Coast. East: Eastside, San Gabriel Valley, portions of the Pomona Valley West: Westside, Beach Cities South: South Bay, South Los Angeles, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Gateway Cities, Los Angeles Harbor Region North: San Fernando Valley, Crescenta Valley, portions of the Conejo Valley, portions of the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita Valley Central: Downtown Los Angeles, Mid-Wilshire, Northeast Los Angeles Angeles National Forest Los Padres National Forest Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area Los Angeles County had a population of 9,818,605 in the 2010 United States Census; the racial makeup of Los Angeles County was 4,936,599 White, 1,346,865 Asian, 856,874 African American, 72,828 Native A
Compressed natural gas
Compressed natural gas is a fuel which can be used in place of gasoline, diesel fuel and propane/LPG. CNG combustion produces fewer undesirable gases than the aforementioned fuels. In comparison to other fuels, natural gas poses less of a threat in the event of a spill, because it is lighter than air and disperses when released. Biomethane – cleaned-up biogas from anaerobic digestion or landfills – can be used. CNG is made by compressing natural gas, to less than 1 percent of the volume it occupies at standard atmospheric pressure, it is stored and distributed in hard containers at a pressure of 20–25 MPa in cylindrical or spherical shapes. CNG is used in traditional gasoline/internal combustion engine automobiles that have been modified or in vehicles which were manufactured for CNG use, either alone, with a segregated gasoline system to extend range or in conjunction with another fuel such as diesel. Natural gas vehicles are used in Iran Pakistan, the Asia-Pacific region, Indian capital of Delhi, other large cities like Ahmedabad, Pune, Kolkata—as well as cities such as Lucknow, Varanasi, etc.
Its use is increasing in South America and North America because of rising gasoline prices. In response to high fuel prices and environmental concerns, CNG is starting to be used in tuk-tuks and pickup trucks and school buses, trains; the cost and placement of fuel storage tanks is the major barrier to wider/quicker adoption of CNG as a fuel. It is why municipal government, public transportation vehicles were the most visible early adopters of it, as they can more amortize the money invested in the new fuel. In spite of these circumstances, the number of vehicles in the world using CNG has grown steadily. Now, as a result of the industry's steady growth, the cost of such fuel storage tanks has been brought down to a much more acceptable level. For the CNG Type 1 and Type 2 tanks, many countries are able to make reliable and cost effective tanks for conversion need. CNG's volumetric energy density is estimated to be 42 percent that of liquefied natural gas, 25 percent that of diesel fuel. Worldwide, there were 14.8 million natural gas vehicles by 2011, led by Iran with 2.86 million, Argentina and India.
With the Asia-Pacific region leading with 5.7 million NGVs, followed by Latin America with four million vehicles. Several manufacturers sell bi-fuel cars. In 2006, Fiat introduced the Siena Tetrafuel in the Brazilian market, equipped with a 1.4L FIRE engine that runs on E100, E25, Ethanol and CNG. Any existing gasoline vehicle can be converted to a dual-fuel vehicle. Authorized shops can do the retrofitting and involves installing a CNG cylinder, plumbing, a CNG injection system and the electronics; the cost of installing a CNG conversion kit can reach $8,000 on passenger cars and light trucks and is reserved for vehicles that travel many miles each year. CNG costs emits up to 90 % fewer emissions than gasoline. CNG locomotives are operated by several railroads; the Napa Valley Wine Train retrofit a diesel locomotive to run on compressed natural gas before 2002. This converted locomotive was upgraded to utilize a computer controlled fuel injection system in May 2008, is now the Napa Valley Wine Train's primary locomotive.
Ferrocarril Central Andino in Peru, has run a CNG locomotive on a freight line since 2005. CNG locomotives are diesel locomotives that have been converted to use compressed natural gas generators instead of diesel generators to generate the electricity that drives the traction motors; some CNG locomotives are able to fire their cylinders only when there is a demand for power, theoretically, gives them a higher fuel efficiency than conventional diesel engines. CNG is cheaper than petrol or diesel. Natural gas vehicle have lower maintenance costs than other hydrocarbon-fuel-powered vehicles. CNG fuel systems are sealed. Increased life of lubricating oils, as CNG does not dilute the crankcase oil. Being a gaseous fuel, CNG mixes and evenly in air. CNG is less to ignite on hot surfaces, since it has a high auto-ignition temperature, a narrow range of flammability. CNG-powered vehicles are considered to be safer than gasoline-powered vehicles. Less pollution and more efficiency: CNG emits less pollution directly than gasoline or oil when combusted.
For example, an engine running on petrol for 100 km emits 22 kilograms of CO2, while covering the same distance on CNG emits only 16.3 kilograms of CO2. Due to lower carbon dioxide emissions, switching to CNG can help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. However, natural gas leaks represent an increase in greenhouse gas emissions; the ability of CNG to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the entire fuel lifecycle will depend on the source of the natural gas and the fuel it is replacing. The lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for CNG compressed from California's pipeline natural gas is given a value of 67.70 grams of CO2-equivalent per megajoule by CARB (the California Air Resource
