Air in India
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

Two years ago, India's Supreme Court set ambitious deadlines for banishing New Delhi's huge fleet of diesel-belching vehicles from the roads in the capital city. The15 thousand public buses and over 50 thousand three wheelers and taxis that run on diesel are major actors in the poor air quality of this city of ten million people.

As Weather Notebook correspondent Manisha Aryal reports from India today, Delhi's commercial drivers are struggling to convert their vehicles to the less polluting compressed gas.

For 4 hours, Rakesh Tiwari has been waiting behind about hundred and fifty three-wheelers, popularly known as Auto-Rickshaws to fill up his vehicle with 2 kilos (about a half a gallon) of compressed natural gas, known as CNG.

Just a few years ago, a World Bank study showed at India was losing up to $2 billion a year due to pollution-related respiratory problems, in large part from particulates in diesel fuels. But cleaning up the air has proved a difficult task in this sprawling metropolis. Even under court order, Delhi is still 20 CNG stations shy of the mandated 85 stations. The result: a lot of long lines, long days and frustration all around.

A large crowd of drivers and commuters has gathered around Rakesh Tiwari. One resident says he hasn't seen his kids for 3 days because he's had to stand in line for hours for gas; another says he has not been able to pay the owner of the vehicle he drives for nearly a month now because he has not been able to make enough money. Delhi residents may be breathing cleaner air, but that air does not come cheap.

That's correspondent Manisha Aryal reporting from Delhi. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory.