Going "Green"

Environmental consciousness has been at the forefront of society for a while and it helped create the rise of use in public transit from 2003 to 2008. While the environmental movement isn’t new, it cannot be marginalized. Going "green" has been a term that I've heard since birth. The public of the 21^st century is definitely well aware of the benefits of mass transit towards the environment: “Transit has been sold as a way to solve…air quality and other environmental problems and make places more livable” says Genevieve Giuliano of University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning and Development (Bellitteri,52).  One of the ways mass transit is “sold” or advertised is to appeal towards people’s desire to be environmentally friendly. 

According to the APTA, each year transit cuts “4.2 billion gallons of gasoline and carbon dioxide emissions by 37 million metric tons” (19). This is over a year however. 20 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions can be trimmed by a single day of riding transit rather than driving (Bellitteri, 62). That’s a lot of pollution saved riding mass transit, not something easily pushed to the background. Thus, while environmental consciousness was not the largest force behind the mass transit boom in 2008, it is an important one. 

But, was going "green" a big enough push for people to move to mass transit?