Arkansas News Bureau - Alternative-fuel vehicles scarce in Arkansas

LITTLE ROCK - While Congress considers an energy bill that calls for 85 percent of American-made vehicles to run on alternative fuels by 2020, Arkansas' public schools are phasing out the handful of non-gasoline powered school buses now on the roads.

"We've got, I'm going to say less than two dozen school buses that are either propane or compressed natural gas, and most of those are older buses and actually most of them are being phased out," said Mike Simmons, senior transportation manager for the state Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation.

School districts acquired the buses in the late 1980s and early-to-mid-1990s, at a time when interest in alternative-fuel vehicles was high. That interest eventually petered out, and today vehicles powered by anything other than gasoline are hard to find in the Natural State.

"There was kind of a push to do natural gas, and then it just kind of flopped," Simmons said.