Breathe Easy Ticket
Sydney Buses is launching a pilot scheme which offers bus travel as a “green” alternative for short trips with Sydney’s CBD.
The scheme is designed to save companies money and at the same time reduce their carbon footprint by encouraging their staff to take the bus instead of using taxi travel for short business trips around the City.
The trial involves the use of TravelTens, currently used by commuters for their trips in and out of the City.
The premium to offset greenhouse gas emissions is still to be calculated but it is likely to be less than 10 cents per trip.
State Transit will be approaching large companies located in the CBD that have identified aggressive greenhouse gas savings as part of their corporate plans to participate in the trial. The participants will be asked to purchase a supply of Breathe Easy TravelTen bus tickets for use by their employees when making short CBD business trips.
The trial will determine if there is a will within the business community to recognise public transport use as a major benefit to the environment and also a significant way to reduce the carbon footprint of their business.
In addition to State Transit’s commitment to the environment, the NSW government is expanding its fleet of Euro 5 diesel buses well ahead of time with the lower emission standards not required in Australia until 2010. A total of 250 Euro 5 diesel buses will be joined by 255 low-emission CNG natural gas-powered buses, which are comparable to diesel buses in terms of emissions output.
As well as improving bus fleet emissions, each person that catches one of these buses means one less car on the road resulting in less congestion and reduced air and noise pollution.