Leave your car at home twice a month for the good of the planet
It’s Earth Day today (Thursday) and we are encouraging people to leave their cars at home twice a month.
Brighton & Hove and Metrobus Managing Director Martin Harris said: "Small changes can make a real difference. Making sustainable transport choices more often is not only the environmental option; it is the ethical option. If everyone switched to walking cycling or getting the bus a couple of times a month, we could collectively rebuild our communities and avoid getting into our cars and clogging up the roads and polluting our air."
Martin said people could calculate the carbon emissions saved for each bus journey they took with the bus company’s Journey Planner, which is on our website. You can find that here: https://www.buses.co.uk/directions.
For example, catching the bus from Peacehaven to Brighton would save 2160g of CO2 compared to driving, the same as keeping a fridge on for 78 days!
Bus is better: key facts
• Switching one in 25 car journeys to public transport would save the UK two million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
• Private cars account for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions from transport. Buses account for just 3% of emissions, and one double-decker bus has the potential to take as many as 75 cars off the road.
• Public transport is good for your health; people who commute typically get 25 minutes’ exercise a day by walking at either end of their journeys.
Martin said Earth Day encouraged people to think about how they could act locally to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality in communities.
Our environmental initiatives include:
• In the last two years, we’ve invested almost £20m in ultra-low and zero emissions buses
• 54 new ultra-low emissions buses that run zero-emissions in Brighton & Hove city centre
• Partnership funding secured for 20 hydrogen fuel cell electric buses for our Metrobus Fastway routes, which have no tailpipe CO2 emissions
• Strong partnerships with local councils to improve road layout, bus lanes and camera enforcement, which improves passenger journeys and reduces fuel use and dwell times.
Buses are clean and safe, Covid-19 secure and customers are welcome on board.