Pittsburgh's Mayor Pushes For Natural Gas-Powered Vehicles

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

October 18, 2011 | 10:53 AM

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Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl at a December 2010 event

Pittsburgh’s mayor wants the city to purchase more natural gas-powered vehicles, according to the Tribune-Review.

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said on Monday he wants to buy four natural-gas-powered garbage trucks that he said are more environmentally friendly and cheaper to run than diesel trucks.
Ravenstahl said the trucks would “improve local air quality, decrease the region’s reliance on imported fuel and reduce the city’s operating costs by nearly $40,000 per year.”
Councilman Doug Shields said he’ll vote for the purchase when Ravenstahl proposes it at today’s council meeting. But he dismissed the idea that it’s a “green” initiative.
“It’s just trading one pollution source for another,” said Shields, who led efforts that resulted in a ban on Marcellus shale drilling in the city.
Although Shields agreed that natural-gas-powered trucks are more fuel-efficient and produce less pollution, he said processes used to extract natural gas — particularly from drilling in Marcellus shale — harm the environment. Industry advocates argue that drillers are regulated and take steps to protect the environment.

Ravenstahl is much more pro-gas than the City Council, which voted to ban hydraulic fracturing within city limits last year.