As we move closer and closer to the launch of America’s first Zero-Emission Multiple Unit (ZEMU), SBCTA is already sharing the insights gained from the journey of making it a reality. On March 6, 2025, SBCTA Transit and Rail staff hosted a tour for the team at the North County Transit District (NCTD) who are embarking on their own hydrogen journey.
The NCTD team explored the ZEMU vehicle and toured the maintenance facility to see the retrofit work, which is a major component of SBCTA’s efforts to adapt the Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) maintenance facility to accommodate features associated with hydrogen units to safely maintain the vehicle. While the DMU and ZEMU vehicles look and feel similar from the passenger perspective, the maintenance and storage needs vary vastly from one another.
In addition, SBCTA staff was able to showcase the challenges experienced during testing and transport as a means to helping NCTD avoid some of the timely and costly pitfalls that can be realized by those new to the technology. As pioneers in this space, SBCTA has thoroughly chronicled the range of effort needed to bring this clean technology to the market and NCTD sees that as an opportunity to accelerate their process through SBCTA’s lessons learned.
The tour was successful and marks just the beginning of this ongoing relationship between the two agencies to advance hydrogen as a technology of choice for the future.