Mass Transit

In all the time I've been writing for AutoblogGreen I've driven a great many different cars and trucks. Whether it's for ABG, Autoblog or my day job at Green Fuels Forecast, I drive most of these different vehicles to review them on one or more of the sites. From time to time, schedules work out in such a way that I may not have a car available with which to get home from the office. Most of the time I hitch a ride with one of my co-workers. On a couple of occasions my wife or daughter has come

The 2004 decision by the city of Elk Grove to purchase refurbished buses with gasoline/electric hybrid drivetrains from ISE and Complete Coach Works sure hasn't panned out as well as had been hoped. With the noble intention of being the first U.S. city with an all-hybrid bus fleet, Elk Grove officials purchased 21 of the buses for around $10 million. According to a spokesperson for the city's contract maintenance company, MV Transportation of Fairfield

Glomming onto a Federal program in the 1970s meant to spur the development of more accessible buses, DeLorean Motor Corporation saw a potential revenue stream. Not that the DMC 80 had anything to do with their now cult-classic sports car, it wouldn't have even been built by DMC. A

London was one of the first cities to use fuel-cell buses provided by Daimler, as consequence of the CUTE (Clean Urban Transport for Europe) pilot program a few years ago. Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, has decided that the program was satisfactory enough and has ordered the purchase of new vehicles, with a target of five percent of city vehicles running on Hydrogen by 2015.

It seems that the latest trend in train technology is hybrid powertrains. For a long time, diesel trains have used electric motors for smoother power but as battery improvements arrive, the powertrains are becoming more sophisticated and handle features such as regenerative braking.

The last city to ressurect tramways has been Buenos Aires, Argentina (with an Alstom Citadis model in the picture). Tramways (streetcars in North America) have made a huge comeback in recent years. During the '50s, trams was replaced by diesel buses, which offered greater flexibility at that moment and were considered far superior. However, buses have a huge drawback called tailpipe emissions and metropolitan areas, which are always more congested, were in the search of better solutions.

Saving money often has the side effect of being what many would consider green. Not the money being green thing, either... as Personal Finance Advice points out here, ditching your car can save emissions and put extra cash in your pocket. Here are the top ten reasons to ditch your car, according to M Butler via Treehugger via Hugg.

USA Today has an article about the return of the street car to several American cities. Streetcars were common from the late nineteenth to the midtwentieth century. As we all know most of the tracks got ripped out and the cars were replaced with buses. As cities have tried to revamp their urban cores, some are using streetcars as a means of attracting developers, businesses and residents back. Electric streetcars have

As U.S. cities take a new look at mass transit services (anticipating increased demand following rising gas prices), transportation planners might want to take a look at a recent survey sponsored by U.K. insurer esure. The survey of U.K. drivers finds that gas prices would have to reach the equivalent of a stratospheric $13.48 per U.S. gallon before they'd consider switching to mass transit.