Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Green Low-Carbon Transit Travel Options


If you are traveling in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Washington, DC, San Francisco, or London, you can find directions and navigation help at www.hopstop.com. Similar to Google-maps, but specific to rail/subway, bus and walking in the above six cities, Hopstop.com will let you enter your starting and destination addresses and provide you with the time, distance and routes by public transit or foot. An incredibly useful tool, we can only hope that hopstop.com will continue to add more cities.

The New York City MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) promotes hopstop.com with facts such as that every full bus keeps up to 40 cars off the roads, and every full train-car keeps between 75-125 cars off the road!

If you are looking for detailed information about what might be the lowest carbon options for vacations this summer, check out the report and guide produced by the Union for Concerned Scientists, Getting There Greener, where they compare the best travel options depending upon number of travelers, distance traveling, and type of transit. The link: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/solutions/cleaner_cars_pickups_and_suvs/greentravel/getting-there-greener.html will let you choose the full report, a summary, or a quick reference chart.

Traveling by public transport not only allows you to go lightly and reduce your carbon footprint, but it also sheds interesting insights into the pulse of the city you are visiting, and I have found usually produces funny travel tales, so let hopstop.com help you with plotting your course.

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