Greater Bangor
BAT Community Connector driver David Billings ends his shift on a
Wednesday in February of 2006. Bangor's
buses and maintenance vehicles have been running on biodiesel fuel since April
1, 2005. (Bangor Daily News file photo/Bridget Brown)
Bangor: BAT
bus credited with reducing emissions
By Kevin Miller
Saturday, September 22, 2007 - Bangor
Daily News
The Bangor BAT Community Connector bus system received good marks from
several environmental groups this week for helping to reduce emissions tied to
global warming.
Overall, the report from New England Climate Coalition gave Maine and the rest of
the region mixed reviews for efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from
the transportation sector.
States that have invested most heavily in mass transit, such as Massachusetts, likewise
are credited with taking the biggest chunk out of emissions of carbon dioxide,
the primary culprit in global warming. Mass transit in Massachusetts averted emissions of 1.3
million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2005.
But the report’s authors said states need to invest more in mass transit to
reduce tailpipe pollution, which accounts for 40 percent of New
England’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Maine,
which spent $6.8 million on transit in 2005, was credited with averting 807
metric tons of greenhouse gases that year.
"As the saying goes, you reap what you sow," Matthew Davis of the
Environment Maine Research and Policy
Center said in a
statement. Environment Maine
was one of the groups that contributed to the report. "If our state is
serious about tackling global warming, we need to invest more in transit."
Several Maine mass transit programs,
including Bangor’s
bus system, were singled out in the report for helping avert greenhouse gas
emissions.
The BAT Community Connector helped avert 119 metric tons of carbon dioxide
emission in 2005, ranking it eighth among public bus systems in New England.
The authors also praised the BAT system for investing in convenient,
low-floor buses, using smaller, more efficient buses and giving the buses a
contemporary facelift by painting them red with a swooping black bat on the
side.
"As described in a recent federal research project on transit
ridership, ‘the result has been a revamping of previously hardened stereotypes
of what public transit looks like — hip, fast and attractive rather than dingy,
smelly and old,’" the report reads. "The approach has worked: 60
percent more trips were taken on the BAT in 2006 than had been taken five years
earlier."
The Downeaster train and the state’s GoMaine van-pools also were credited
with helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the authors called on the
state to work on expanding mass transit opportunities.
Among the recommendations were:
- Extend Downeaster rail
service to Brunswick
and Lewiston-Auburn.
- Plan projects to enhance the
efficiency of the state and region’s transit system, such as the
Boston-Maine high-speed rail corridor.
- Boost ridership by improving
existing transit systems.
- Rework transportation
spending to funnel more money into mass transit.
Only by reducing Mainers’ reliance on the personal vehicle will the state be
able to meet goals on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the authors said.
"Our dependence on automobiles makes Mainers drive more and more miles
each year. The good and bad news is that we haven’t even scratched the surface
of creating a comprehensive, convenient and comfortable transit system,"
Dylan Voorhees with the Natural Resources Council of Maine, another contributor
to the report, said in a statement.
TransitGW.BDN.9.22.07.doc