Media Contacts:
Sandi Moody, executive director, Bay Area Commuter
Services,
800-998-RIDE
(7433) or
Vicki Parsons,
TAMPA, Fla. – Eleven
local organizations were inducted into the Clean Air Partnership (
New
inductees include:
·
AAA
Auto Club South
·
Bank
of
·
City
of
·
Evatone, Inc.
·
Hillsborough
Area Regional Transit Authority
·
Mortgage
Investors Corporation
·
NuAir Manufacturing Company
·
·
·
Smart
Certify Direct
·
·
Westshore
·
Wyndham
Harbour Island Hotel
The awards recognize organizations
that are helping to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution by establishing
employee commuter assistance programs and clean-fuel vehicle fleets. “Eighty
percent of commuters in Tampa Bay drive to work alone, making vehicle emissions
a critical issue in our region,” said Sandi Moody, executive director of BACS.
“Helping to reduce the number of employees driving alone to work is a
cost-effective way to reduce vehicle emissions.”
CAP companies may select from a
series of choices, but all emphasize encouraging employees to use commute
options that reduce rush hour traffic, such as vanpooling, carpooling, riding
busses, telecommuting, staggered or flexible work hours, and bicycling or
walking.
Featured speakers at BACS annual
meeting included Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and Kenneth
Hartmann, secretary of District Seven, Florida Department of Transportation,
who addressed the need for building roads that increase opportunities for
pedestrians and bicyclists. “We’re so focused on getting cars from point A to
point B that we’re not building bicycle lanes, we’re not landscaping and we’re
not making sure sidewalks are wide enough for pedestrians – and we’re losing
our qualify of life,” said Iorio. A chairman of
Hillsborough Regional Transit Authority in 1991, Iorio
said bus service in Hillsborough County has shrunk rather than expanded in the
past several years. “We can’t be a vibrant sophisticated city when our mass
transit service areas are shrinking not growing.”
The state
legislature also recognized the importance of commuter choices and appropriated
$5 million to each district to study ways to enhance all modes of
transportation, adds Hartmann. “We agree that we need to work with all modes of
traffic, including mass transit, pedestrians and bicyclists. You’ll be seeing
more emphasis on this in the district, as well as across the state.”
Charter members
of the Clean Air Partnership inducted at the 2002 BACS annual meeting include
AEGON, Bay Area Commuter Services, Busch Gardens, Don CeSar
Beach Resort & Spa, Florida Department of Transportation, James A. Haley
Veterans’ Hospital,
Members of
the Environmental Protection Agency’s Best Workplaces for Commuters, a national
clean air partnership program, include the Center for Urban Transportation
Research,
Bay Area Commuter Services, is a
not-for-profit commuter assistance agency funded by the Florida Department of
Transportation to help relieve traffic congestion and improve air quality in
the
Photos available upon request.