SunLine Transit Agency, a transit operator in

Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Unit ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

(with over 3.5 million passengers a year), is a transit agency providing bus service in the Palm Springs Area, with service extending into

San Bernardino Transit Center The San Bernardino Transit Center (Metrolink designation San Bernardino–Downtown) is an intermodal transit center in downtown San Bernardino, California, United States. It is owned and operated by Omnitrans, the area's public transportation ...

during peak hours. In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday as of .

History and description

SunLine Transit Agency (STA) was established under a Joint Powers Agreement, initially between Riverside County and Coachella Valley cities (

Coachella Coachella may refer to: * Coachella, California * Coachella Canal, in California * Coachella (festival), an annual music and arts festival in California * "Coachella – Woodstock in My Mind", a 2017 song by Lana del Rey See also

* Coachell ...

, Desert Hot Springs,

Indio Indio may refer to: Places * Indio, Bovey Tracey, an historic estate in Devon, England * Indio, California, a city in Riverside County, California, United States People with the name * Indio (musician), Canadian musician Gordon Peterson * Índio, ...

Palm Desert Palm Desert is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, in the Coachella Valley, approximately east of Palm Springs, northeast of San Diego and east of Los Angeles. The population was 48,445 at the 2010 census. The city has been ...

, and

Palm Springs Palm Springs (Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Riverside County by land ...

) on July 1, 1977.

Cathedral City Cathedral city is a city status in the United Kingdom. Cathedral city may also refer to: * Cathedral City, California, a city in Southern California, United States * Cathedral City Cheddar, a brand of Cheddar cheese * Cathedral City High Schoo ...

, Indian Wells,

La Quinta La Quinta (Spanish language, Spanish for "The Fifth") is a desert resort town, resort city in Riverside County, California, United States. Located between Indian Wells, California, Indian Wells and Indio, California, Indio, it is one of the nin ...

, and

Rancho Mirage Rancho Mirage is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. The population was 17,218 at the 2010 census, up from 13,249 at the 2000 census, but the seasonal (part-time) population can exceed 20,000. Incorporated in 1973 and locate ...

were added later. Each of the nine member cities selects one member of the SunLine Board of Directors, with the tenth provided by Riverside County. The service area covers , bounded approximately by the

San Gorgonio Pass The San Gorgonio Pass, or Banning Pass, is a elevation gap on the rim of the Great Basin between the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south. The pass was formed by the San Andreas Fault, a major trans ...

on the west and the

Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf o ...

on the southeast. In addition to its transit operations, SunLine regulates local taxi services (as the SunLine Regulatory Administration, a division of the SunLine Services Group) and sells CNG and hydrogen to the public from dispensers at its Thousand Palms and Indio operations facilities, under the brand SunFuels.

Routes

Destinations

Destinations served include: * Agua Caliente Casino *

Agua Caliente Cultural Museum The Agua Caliente Cultural Museum is a culture and history museum located in Palm Springs, California, United States, focusing on the Cahuilla people of the Coachella Valley. History The museum was established in 1991. Exhibits Collections A ...

* National Date Festival Fairgrounds *

Indian Wells Tennis Garden The Indian Wells Tennis Garden is a tennis facility in Indian Wells, near Palm Springs, California, in the Coachella Valley. The 16,100-capacity Stadium 1 is the largest stadium at the tennis complex, and the second largest outdoor tennis stad ...

Palm Springs Air Museum The Palm Springs Air Museum (PSAM), is a non-profit educational institution in Palm Springs, Riverside County, California. The Museum's mission is to exhibit, educate and eternalize the role of the World War II combat aircraft and the role the pil ...

Indio High School Indio High School is a public high school for grades 9–12. It is located in Indio, California and has a current enrollment of about 2,090 students. Its mascot is a Rajah (an Indian prince). The school is part of the Desert Sands Unified School ...

* La Quinta High School *

Palm Desert High School Palm Desert High School is a secondary school located in Palm Desert, California. The school is a part of the Desert Sands Unified School District. Academics Palm Desert offers numerous Advanced Placement and Honors courses, amongst CP classes ...

Palm Springs High School Palm Springs High School is a public high school for grades 9 through 12 located in Palm Springs, California as part of the Palm Springs Unified School District. It was built in 1938 in an effort led by city pioneer Nellie Coffman. Athletics P ...

Cathedral City High School Cathedral City High School is a public high school for grades 9-12. It is located in Cathedral City, California and is part of the Palm Springs Unified School District. History The school was established in 1991. Athletics * * DVL Champs Footbal ...

Rancho Mirage High School Rancho Mirage High School is a secondary school located in Rancho Mirage, California. The school is a part of the Palm Springs Unified School District. Rancho Mirage High School was founded in 2013. RMHS is a comprehensive high school offerin ...

Desert Memorial Park Desert Memorial Park is a cemetery in Cathedral City, California, United States, near Palm Springs. Opening in 1956 and receiving its first interment in 1957,The Palm Springs Cemetery District itself was covers 504 square miles, including Palm Spr ...

Eisenhower Medical Center The Eisenhower Medical Center (EMC) is a not-for-profit hospital based in Rancho Mirage, California, serving the Coachella Valley region of Southeastern California. It was named one of the top one hundred hospitals in the United States in 2005. ...

Westfield Palm Desert The Shops at Palm Desert (previously Westfield Palm Desert) is a shopping mall located in Palm Desert, California which serves the Coachella Valley. The mall is presently owned through a joint venture between O'Connor Capital Partners and Unibail ...

* McCallum Theater *

College of the Desert College of the Desert (COD) is a public community college in Palm Desert, California. COD enrolls about 12,500 students, of which around one third attend college full-time. It serves the Coachella Valley of Riverside County. The college is federa ...

Palm Springs Aerial Tramway The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway in Palm Springs, California, is the largest rotating aerial tramway in the world. It was opened in September 1963 as a way of getting from the floor of the Coachella Valley to near the top of San Jacinto Peak and was ...

California State University, San Bernardino California State University, San Bernardino (Cal State San Bernardino or CSUSB) is a public research university in San Bernardino, California. Founded in 1965, it is one of the 23 general campuses of the California State University system. The m ...

Governance

SunLine is governed by a board of directors with 10 members * 1 City Council member From Palm Springs * 1 City Council member from the 9 cities in the Palm Springs Area that are not Palm Springs City. * 1 from the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, that represents the Palm Springs Area (District 4) Chair Glenn Miller Vice Chair

Lisa Middleton Lisa Middleton (born 1952) is an American politician, a member of the Palm Springs city council and the Former is Mayor of Palm Springs. She was first elected to the City Council in 2017 and is the first transgender person to be elected in Califo ...

Chief Executive Officer Lauren Skiver

Facilities and fleet

The initial fleet included 22 buses in 1977. SunDial paratransit operations started in 1991. The SunLine Board of Directors adopted a resolution in 1992 to convert their fleet to alternative fuel, and became the first transit agency in the United States to do so in 1994, using

compressed natural gas Compressed natural gas (CNG) is a fuel gas mainly composed of methane (CH4), compressed to less than 1% of the volume it occupies at standard atmospheric pressure. It is stored and distributed in hard containers at a pressure of , usually in cy ...

(CNG) buses. Starting in 2000, SunLine began limited operations with hydrogen

fuel cell bus A fuel cell bus is a bus that uses a hydrogen fuel cell as its power source for electrically driven wheels, sometimes augmented in a hybrid fashion with batteries or a supercapacitor. The only emission from the bus is water. Several cities arou ...

es, installing a hydrogen fuel station using a Stuart Energy electrolyzer to supply the

XCELLSiS Ballard Power Systems Inc. is a developer and manufacturer of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell products for markets such as heavy-duty motive (consisting of bus and tram applications), portable power, material handling as well as engine ...

ZEbus for a 13-month trial. The first revenue operations were conducted with the

Thor Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred groves ...

ISE Ise may refer to: Places * Ise, Mie, a city in Japan **Ise Grand Shrine, a Shinto shrine located in Ise, Mie * Ise Ekiti, a city in Nigeria *Ise, Norway, a village in Norway *Ise Province, an ancient province of Japan * River Ise, a tributary of th ...

ThunderPower fuel cell bus, using an ElDorado National EZ-Rider II chassis, between November 2002 to February 2003. By that time, SunLine also had installed a HyRadix methane reformer to generate hydrogen. SunLine tested a hydrogen hybrid internal combustion engine (HHICE) bus in early 2005; the bus was subsequently sent to

Winnipeg Transit Winnipeg Transit is the public transit agency, and the bus-service provider, of the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Established years ago, it is owned by the city government and currently employs nearly 1,600 people—including approximately 1,1 ...

for cold weather testing. STA plans to convert their fleet to zero-emission buses (ZEB) by 2035, with only ZEBs purchased starting in 2021. Due to the relatively long fixed routes, the final mix of ZEBs is expected to be mostly hydrogen fuel-cell buses. SunLine has two operations and maintenance facilities: one (including the administrative offices) in Thousand Palms, and another in Indio. , on-site refueling and charging capabilities include an electrolyzer that can produce of hydrogen at Thousand Palms, which came online in 2019, and six 80 kW AC/DC battery-electric bus chargers, three each at both Thousand Palms and Indio. Hydrogen dispensers (using delivered liquid ) and additional chargers are planned for both facilities. Hydrogen production started in November 2000. Two electrolyzers and a natural gas reformer were part of the initial installation. One electrolyzer, supplied by Teledyne Brown, generated per hour using 7.5 kW of electricity, supplied by solar panels; the other electrolyzer, supplied by Stuart Energy, produced per hour. The reformer produced per hour. The HyRadix Adéo reformer was installed at the end of 2003.

References

External links

Official SunLine Transit Agency website
{{Southern California Transit Public transportation in Riverside County, California Coachella Valley Bus transportation in California Transit agencies in California Cathedral City, California Coachella, California Desert Hot Springs, California Indio, California La Quinta, California Palm Springs, California Transit authorities with natural gas buses