Veolia Transportation Services, Inc., North America’s largest private provider of public transit services, has awarded Clean Energy Fuels Corp. a contract to build, operate, and maintain a compressed natural gas (CNG) bus fueling station at Veolia facilities in downtown Los Angeles.

   Under contract with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), Veolia will begin operating new environmentally friendly CNG buses for the agency in April 2010, as Metro accelerates efforts to replace older diesel-fueled buses with new CNG models. The Veolia-operated transit buses are deployed in Metro’s North Los Angeles County service area.

   Construction of the new Veolia/Clean Energy CNG station will begin in January 2010, with completion set for mid 2010. CNG fuel requirements are projected at more than 420,000 gasoline-gallon-equivalents in the first year of the Veolia station’s operations.

   Veolia Transportation is the largest private operator of bus, rail, paratransit, shuttle and taxi businesses in North America. The company has over 16.000 employees and operates 200 contracts for cities in the U.S. Veolia Transportation is part of Veolia Transport, the world’s largest private operator of multiple modes of public transit. Veolia Transport manages contracts for 5.000 city transit authorities in 27 countries, and transports 2.7 billion passengers per year.