Somebody thinks so. Rob Goodspeed, an urban planning student at MIT (and co-founder of our sister site DCist), has come up with an analysis of various cities' commutes by public transportation, biking, and walking. Our extensive (but expensive) commuter rail system (which goes "all the way to Rhode Island"!) and high percentage of people who walk to work (do you know anyone who walks to work? in the winter?) bring us to the forefront of green cities in Goodspeed's analysis... at least when it comes to commuting. According to the data, Boston boasts 32% transit ridership, 14% of us walk, and 1.2% of the population is brave enough to bike on our cold, crowded streets. This helped us tie with San Francisco for the second greenest transit city, after Washington, D.C.

We've sucked at recycling in the past, and for all those green commuters, there still seem to be plenty of cars on the road. However, we do have some green colleges in New England; maybe these grads will come to town and keep the green commuting rate high. What do you think of Boston's transit footprint? Good and green, or not so much?

Filed in Miscellaneous and tagged biking, commuting, green cities, mbta, public transportation, walking

Comments [rss]