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Through this project, the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) sought to deploy alternative refueling stations, alternative fuel vehicles, and advanced technology vehicles in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area. This was pursued in a fuel- and technology- neutral manner, with a portfolio of different technologies and fuels. In total, the project deployed 290 vehicles and 11 refueling stations across 17 fleets, including cities, independent school districts, a major commercial airport, private sector fleets, and a faith-based nonprofit.

This project leveraged existing alternative fuel vehicle curricula that was previously developed by the National Alternative Fuel Vehicle Consortium (NAFTC) or FS Circle to provide training to fire marshals, code officials, mechanics, and technicians. The training focused on issues related to compressed natural gas, propane, and electricity and filled training needs across a 4-state area in the South Central U.S. The project team held a total of 30 training classes with over 350 attendees using grant funds. A Future Action Plan to guide future alternative fuel training was also developed to assist others with successfully deploying future trainings.

The Moving North Texas Forward by Addressing Alternative Fuel Barriers project focused on educating policy makers; updating the State Implementation Plan (SIP); creating an alternative fuel vehicle parking program; holding fuel-specific deployment workshops and first responder training; educating fleet managers, decision makers, businesses, and schools about alternative fuels and advanced technology vehicles; and developing a fleet recognition program.

The Aggregated Alternative Technology Alliance (AATA), also known as Fleets for the Future (F4F), worked to eliminate barriers to alternative fuel vehicle and infrastructure adoption in public and private fleets by consolidating bulk equipment orders and streamlining the procurement process. The project was led by the National Association of Regional Councils who worked with multiple project partners and stakeholders in 11 states to develop fuel neutral best practices, cooperative procurement agreement templates, and design a web-based toolkit to educate fleets and procurement officers. The partners used outreach and education to share information about these resources to motivate fleet managers and consumers to purchase alternative fuel vehicles, equipment, and infrastructure.

As of 2018, the F4F team wrote 5 best practices guides, a multi-step strategic procurement process guide, and created a national procurement plan for the public sector. All of these publications are available on the project’s website. The project also resulted in 5 regional pilot procurement initiatives in Kansas City, Missouri; Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; and Washington, D.C. Each regional pilot was associated with training opportunities for regional councils and fleets to address the unique barriers and procurement needs. Over 33,000 people were reached through these in-person events and over 3,000 people were reached through webinar participation.

The objective of the project is to build agent-based models and acquire relevant vehicle, fueling infrastructure, and operational data to establish a hydrogen fueling and heavy-duty freight truck network leveraging this fueling infrastructure in the Texas Triangle and I-10 corridor from Houston to Los Angeles, CA. The models will be refined for the regional specific analysis and results from earlier efforts by considering the scalability challenges associated with the deployment of a hydrogen freight transport eco-system. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts will be performed throughout to positively affect the local communities and provide critical inputs to the models. The project will combine the theoretical model results with practical experience in partnership with local community input to provide realistic, equitable, investable, and useable plans for the development of hydrogen infrastructure needed to support commercial heavy-duty (HD) truck freight mobility.