Riverside's Hydrogen Station Opens in the Nation's Smoggiest County
Riverside Transit Agency unveiled its first hydrogen fueling station and put its first five hydrogen fuel cell buses into service on September 1, 2026, marking the start of a phased retirement of the compressed natural gas fleet that has carried Riverside County riders for decades (Rain Cross Gazette, 2026). RTA CEO Kristin Warsinski called it "an honor to welcome our new eco-friendly hydrogen-fueling station and our first hydrogen-powered buses as we celebrate this exciting milestone for RTA and Riverside County" (Rain Cross Gazette, 2026). Board Chair and Corona City Councilmember Jim Steiner said a greener public transportation service had been a top priority for the board, calling the opening "a monumental milestone" (Rain Cross Gazette, 2026). California Air Resources Board member and Riverside Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson and Riverside County Supervisor Jose Medina joined the ceremony, a lineup signaling county infrastructure, not just a transit agency event.
The five 40 foot buses now running on hydrogen were purchased with a $5.1 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant, part of roughly $1.6 billion the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law's Low or No Emission Vehicle Program distributed nationally to fund more than 1,100 zero emission buses across some 150 transit fleets (Riverside Transit Agency, n.d.). RTA separately secured $8.7 million for the fueling station and $1.6 million for solar panels at its Riverside and Hemet facilities, plus $4.89 million in additional competitive Low or No Emission grant funding tied to this opening (Rain Cross Gazette, 2026; Riverside Transit Agency, n.d.). The station was designed and built by Clean Energy Fuels Corp, which describes hydrogen as a reliable solution for long routes and says the facility will support RTA's community goals for years to come, according to Senior Vice President Chad Lindholm (Clean Energy Fuels Corp, 2024). Notably, this is a private access station built for RTA's fleet, supplied and maintained under contract with Clean Energy, rather than a public retail site. That distinction matters given that California's public hydrogen retail network spent much of early 2026 fighting documented reliability problems that eroded driver confidence statewide. A dedicated fleet station with a guaranteed supply contract sidesteps that failure mode, at least for RTA's own buses.
So what does this actually change. RTA operates 145 large CNG buses, and the agency plans to replace all of them with zero emission vehicles in phases starting this year, with smaller buses and trolleys, currently CNG and unleaded gasoline, also positioned to convert (Riverside Transit Agency, n.d.). Clean Energy says the station is built to scale well beyond its opening day footprint, with capacity to eventually serve more than 100 hydrogen buses within the next decade (Clean Energy Fuels Corp, 2024). That is the real signal here. Five buses on the road is a ribbon cutting. A station engineered for twenty times that fleet size is a bet that hydrogen can carry the heavy duty, long route service battery electric buses still struggle to match on range and turnaround time.
The public health argument behind that bet is not abstract in Riverside County. The American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report ranked Riverside County second nationally for ozone pollution, with 126.7 unhealthy air days measured across 2022 through 2024, while neighboring San Bernardino County ranked first with 159.2 such days (KVCR, 2026). Together the two neighboring counties have topped the nation's smog rankings for 26 straight years. Kaiser Permanente pediatrician Dr. Afif Al Hasan described ozone as a corrosive chemical that attacks the airways and lungs, comparing its effect to a sunburn inside the lung (KVCR, 2026). Heavy duty diesel and natural gas vehicles are significant contributors to the nitrogen oxide emissions that cook into ground level ozone under the Inland Empire's abundant sunshine and mountain ringed geography, which traps pollution rather than letting it disperse. A transit fleet is a small slice of that emissions inventory, but it is a visible, publicly owned slice, and every CNG bus RTA retires removes tailpipe nitrogen oxide and particulate output from routes running through some of the same neighborhoods breathing the nation's worst air.
This is also a workforce story, though smaller than the emissions story. The Low or No Emission program funding RTA drew on was, for the first time, structured so five percent of national grant dollars support worker training on maintaining the new clean technology, a detail then Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tied to good jobs alongside cleaner air when the program was announced (Riverside Transit Agency, n.d.). Fuel cell buses and liquid hydrogen equipment require different maintenance skills than CNG buses, and RTA's mechanics are among the first in the county to build that expertise, which matters if the station grows toward a hundred buses.
None of this resolves the open questions hydrogen transit still faces, including fuel cost per mile against battery electric alternatives and how reliably a young supply chain can keep a growing fleet fueled. What Riverside County offers is a testable version of the hydrogen economy argument: heavy duty routes in a region with dangerous air quality, served by a dedicated station built to scale rather than a single pilot deployment. Whether that bet pays off will show up less in ribbon cutting quotes than in whether RTA is still running hydrogen buses on schedule a decade from now, and whether the county's ozone numbers have started to move.
References
Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (2024, December 11). Clean Energy to design and build new hydrogen station for Riverside Transit Agency. https://cleanenergyfuels.com/press-room/clean-energy-to-design-and-build-new-hydrogen-station-for-riverside-transit-agency
KVCR. (2026, April 22). Inland Empire once again ranks top for most polluted area in the nation. https://kvcr.org/news/local/2026-04-22/inland-empire-once-again-ranks-top-for-most-polluted-area-in-the-nation
Rain Cross Gazette. (2026, September 1). RTA unveils hydrogen fueling station, first zero-emission buses. https://www.raincrossgazette.com/rta-unveils-hydrogen-fueling-station-first-zero-emission-buses/
Riverside Transit Agency. (n.d.). New grant fuels RTA's move to zero-emission buses. https://www.riversidetransit.com/index.php/news-a-publications/press-releases/690-new-grant-fuels-rta-s-move-to-zero-emission-buses
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