Tag Archives: sustainability

Metro receives Galaxy Star award from Alliance to Save Energy

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The Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) has recognized Metro with a Galaxy Star award for its comprehensive sustainability plan, which includes outstanding energy efficiency improvements in Metro’s fleet and buildings.

In 2011, Metro achieved its goal of a 100% alternatively fueled bus fleet, and its rail propulsion power efficiency used 1.93 kilowatt-hours of electricity per rail boarding in 2011 – a 15% increase in efficiency since 2005. Metro is exploring regenerative braking for rail cars, and a 1-megawatt Wayside Energy Storage Substation (WESS) is estimated to reduce energy consumption by 670,000 kilowatt-hours annually once it is operational. Air pollutant emissions have decreased by 37.6% per passenger mile traveled with across-the-board improvements in water usage, solid waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and recycling.

The 2013 Stars of Energy Efficiency awards ceremony will be held on October 2. Visit Metro’s website for more information on its sustainability plan. To read the full press release from ASE, continue after the jump.

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Metro receives Sustainability Commitment Platinum Recognition from APTA

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Metro is receiving the Sustainability Commitment Platinum Recognition from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) for its national leadership in environmental and sustainability initiatives. Metro is the first and only recipient of this recognition in the country.

Metro has achieved significant positive effects towards reducing the effects of extreme weather and changing climate conditions in the Los Angeles region through the reduction of energy and water use, reducing harmful air pollutant emissions and the use of less carbon intensive fuels in its rolling stock, according to APTA.

 

Caltrans details major efforts to fight climate change

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Caltrans released a comprehensive report today detailing its efforts to fight climate change by curbing greenhouse gas emissions and embracing new technology such as low-energy cement and efficient LED lighting. The report also describes the department’s efforts to adapt to the negative effects of climate change, such as more frequent and intense flooding and heat waves.

For the rest of Caltrans’ press release and the link to the full report, keep reading after the jump.

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New York City’s transportation boss offers a few lessons on making the big changes actually happen

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Janette Sadik-Khan at last night's event. Photo by Juan Matute/UCLA.

Janette Sadik-Khan at last night’s event talking about closing parts of Times Square to traffic in favor of pedestrian plazas. Photo by Juan Matute/UCLA.

I had the good fortune of attending a forum last night with Janette Sadik-Khan, the innovative Transportation Commissioner for New York City. She was the featured speaker at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs Complete Streets Initiative, an effort to make local streets more user-friendly for pedestrians, cyclists, transit users and motorists.

New York has taken a number of bold steps since Sadik-Khan began working for Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007: building new public plazas in places that were once streets (including parts of Times Square), creating new bus rapid transit lines with the New York MTA, adding 300 miles of bike lanes and implementing traffic calming measures to reduce fatalities and injuries caused by motor vehicles in New York City’s five boroughs. The New York MTA is also building a new subway line and extending another.

In other words, New York City made a lot of significant changes quickly, not letting distractors or controversy get in the way even when things didn’t break their way (such as a plan to implement congestion pricing in Manhattan). I think most of what she discussed is highly relevant here, given that some big changes are underway in L.A. County courtesy of Metro’s Measure R program along with many other local initiatives and projects that are either being discussed, studied or implemented across the county.

I few things I heard that I really liked:

•”Just remember the headlines don’t always translate into the opinions of actual people,” said Sadik-Khan. Couldn’t agree more. It’s difficult in some media reports to gauge the degree of opposition or support for a particular projects and many media outlets either don’t offer the context or disclosed they rely on the same people for years for quotes.

•”Safety and sustainability go hand in hand,” she said. “You won’t get more people walking or biking if they don’t feel safe.” Several cities in L.A. County are quickly putting in new bikes but I haven’t seen a lot of data about which are being used and which are not — and why not. For example, there are new bike lanes directly next to three lanes of freeway-like traffic on Huntington Boulevard in El Sereno. It’s great to have the lanes, but I have seen very few people actually using them and non-productive lanes could harm the overall program. 

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Metro lauded in federal "leaner and greener" report

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Click above to download the report!

Each weekday, there are about 1.5 million boardings on Metro buses and trains across Los Angeles County. It takes a lot of energy to move all those people; fuel is needed for buses while electricity powers trains and Metro’s many facilities across Los Angeles County.

In the past few years, however, Metro has made serious inroads into making sustainability and the environment among the agency’s top concerns. Metro has managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, expand renewable energy it generates, assemble the largest clean fuel bus fleet in the nation and become the first transit agency in the U.S. to adopt a Green Construction Policy to reduce emissions from construction equipment.

It was for these reasons and others that received some welcome news in late November when a new report titled “Leaner and Greener” by the Federal Highway Administration and the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials singled out Metro as the prime example of a transportation agency putting sustainability at the forefront.

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Transportation headlines, Monday, Feb. 6

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the Library’s Headlines blog, which you can also access via email subscription or RSS feed.

Auto-industry ads score at the Super Bowl (Wall Street Journal)

Clint Eastwood makes Chrysler’s day with a powerful Super Bowl ad suggesting that America isn’t dead yet. ”This country can’t be knocked out with one punch; we get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.” Eastwood at the wheel of his Gran Torino (that’s a Ford actually) was a standout among the too many car ads that aired this Super Bowl Sunday.

Bev. Hills experts cast doubt on Metro report (Los Angeles Streetsblog)

The firm hired by Beverly Hills to conduct geological studies of the Westside Subway Extension options has come to different conclusions from the team of experts hired by Metro.  Exponent-Failure Analysis Associates concludes that, “… additional effort is needed to accurately identify, quantify, rank and mitigate the potential hazards posed by the proposed Westside Subway Extension Project before one of the two presented alternatives, or a third alternative, are selected for implementation.”

Commentary: Assemblyman Mike Feuer responds to BHUSD (Beverly Hills Patch)

In more Beverly Hills news, with the Beverly Hills Unified School District actively challenging one of routes the Metro Board will be considering for the Westside Subway Extension, Assemblyman Mike Feuer took to the Beverly Hills Patch to explain AB 1444. Feuer’s recently introduced bill which is designed to streamline the approval process for public transit projects, would only apply to projects for which, unlike the subway, a draft environmental impact report has yet to be circulated. In his piece Feuer adds that legislation enacted this session wouldn’t take effect until at least next January—well after any legal challenge to the subway route would be filed.

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How do they do that? Save money by recycling

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Photo by Moria via Flickr

How do they do that? is a series for The Source that explores the technology that helps keep Metro running and passengers and other commuters moving. Some of it applies directly to the trains, buses and freeways and some of it runs in the background — invisible to nearly everyone but essential to mobility in our region.

How does Metro’s resource and energy conservation program save the agency $2 million per year?

In part it’s the little things that add up and Metro is constantly looking for more ways to conserve energy. Setting all of the agency’s multi-function photocopiers to double-sided printing, for example, is expected to save $20,000 annually on paper costs, at the same time it reduces the agency’s waste stream and conserves energy.

Metro also recycles a long list of items. In addition to being helpful to the environment, recycling and reselling can be revenue producing at a time when transit agencies are scrambling to balance budgets. Recycling of cardboard, paper, trash and aluminum cans from all facilities reduces landfill use, as well as landfill and recycling fees for Metro.

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Metro receives award for converting bus fleet to CNG

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Metro and Foothill Transit just picked up an award from the South Coast Air Quality Management District for “Promotion of Good Environmental Stewardship.”

The award honors Metro’s switch to 100 percent alternative fuels earlier this year, which made it the first major transit agency in the world to operate only CNG-fueled buses. Here’s the excerpt from the news release:

Award for Promotion of Good Environmental Stewardship – Foothill Transit and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA):

Foothill Transit, which serves 21 cities in the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys, began purchasing CNG buses in 2002 and has almost exclusively purchased CNG buses ever since. Foothill aims to have a 100 percent Clean Air fleet by 2013. Foothill Transit also has deployed three zero-emission fast-charge Ecoliner buses since 2010. In addition to having zero tailpipe emissions and using renewable energy, the Ecoliner’s unique structure, recyclable batteries and long life make its carbon footprint one of the lowest of any transit buses today.

When MTA officially retired its last diesel bus in January 2011, the public transit agency became the nation’s largest operator of a compressed natural gas fleet with 2,221 buses. Metro’s emission reduction efforts have brought about an 80 percent reduction in cancer-causing particulates and a reduction in greenhouse gases by more than 300,000 pounds a day. In addition, Metro has been an environmental steward in other ways, with the largest solar panel installation in the transit industry.

The entire news release from the AQMD is after the jump.

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