In the debate over its 2000-2004 capital program, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has justified the purchase of hundreds of new diesel buses with the argument that CNG-powered express and articulated buses aren't commercially available.

CNG-powered express buses are already on the road in New Jersey. The seeming confidence of smaller transit systems in creating a market for production of CNG articulated buses would also seem to reveal the MTA's position for what it is: another tactic in a long campaign of deflection and delay to avoid adopting a clean fuel bus policy.