The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) plans to spend an additional $27.6 million on hydrogen fueling infrastructure while expanding its fuel-cell bus fleet from 10 buses currently to about 50 buses. However, according to the analysis published in CleanTechnica, this step is not merely a routine infrastructure expansion; it comes after the failure of the system the agency previously relied on to fuel its buses.
In 2020, OCTA opened a large hydrogen station at the Santa Ana Base, designed to fuel approximately 40 to 50 buses per day. However, the station became unusable after the agency and Air Products failed to reach a new commercial agreement concerning leased liquid-hydrogen equipment. In January 2026, Air Products removed the hydrogen tank and vaporizers, leaving the agency with buses that were still expected to have years of service remaining, but without an effective fueling system at its depot.
The Impact of the Outage Appeared in Operating Figures
The operational impact was significant. The agency’s 10 fuel-cell buses traveled 270,462 miles during 2024, but that distance fell to only 14,232 miles in 2025—a decline of approximately 95%. Fueling problems forced the agency to rely on an off-site commercial station and temporary mobile solutions while it worked to restore its ability to fuel buses at the depot.
OCTA also operates battery-electric buses, allowing an internal comparison between the two options rather than relying solely on a theoretical comparison between the technologies. According to the article, the agency recorded no loss of electric-bus operations because charging infrastructure was unavailable. The charging infrastructure for these buses cost approximately $6 million, while hydrogen requires a more specialized system encompassing storage, supply, contracts, and distribution.
The Station Is Only the Visible Part of the System
OCTA’s experience shows that a bus’s technical operability alone is not enough to ensure that it can operate. A fuel-cell bus needs hydrogen delivered daily, meeting purity requirements, being reasonably priced at the fueling point, and having genuinely low carbon intensity across the production and transportation stages. In addition to the distribution station, the fuel chain includes production, compression or liquefaction, transportation, storage, and specialized maintenance.
The Garden Grove station contract reflects this broader scope of spending. The $27.6 million contract is not limited to designing and building the station; it also includes facility modifications, hydrogen supply, operations and maintenance, and training during the opening period. Thus, the agency is not merely purchasing a fuel dispenser, but attempting to secure an integrated pathway for delivering hydrogen to the buses. Total spending on fueling has risen to more than $100 million.
What Changes Practically in the Purchasing Decision?
The Garden Grove station provides greater capacity and a higher degree of redundancy, which may be a logical response after the agency committed to a larger hydrogen fleet. However, the author argues that the strategic failure occurred earlier, when the agency continued committing to expansion despite the fueling system’s failure and the need for a major new investment, even though battery-electric buses were operating in its system more reliably and at lower cost, according to the article.
From a procurement perspective, the case also shows that hydrogen’s fast-refueling advantage cannot be separated from the creation of specialized and possibly redundant infrastructure, or from maintaining long-term supply relationships. Battery buses have their own challenges, particularly upgrades to electrical capacity at depots, but they rely on an electricity grid that already serves buildings, industry, and vehicles in the area. By contrast, hydrogen requires the transit agency to create a second system for delivering and maintaining energy for a relatively small fleet.
A Lesson for Future Projects
The analysis concludes that the bus is only one part of the propulsion system. Before purchasing hydrogen buses, a transit agency needs a reliable answer to how genuinely low-cost, low-carbon fuel will reach the depot throughout the buses’ 12-to-15-year operating lives. OCTA’s experience is particularly significant because the buses, the fueling arrangement that failed, and the comparison with electric buses all exist within the same agency.
The author takes a critical view of OCTA’s continued expansion of its hydrogen fleet and compares it with a similar case involving the Aberdeen agency, which abandoned its buses under comparable circumstances. The author also notes that subsidy-supported fleets may create pressure for additional investment after the initial purchase. This conclusion does not mean that all hydrogen projects will meet the same fate, but it confirms that evaluating a bus must include its fuel source, contracts, storage, maintenance, and the ability to sustain supply throughout the operating period.