Mary Sell, Best Workplaces for Commuters Coordinator with the Triangle J Council of Governments (TJCOG), has polled Triangle J residents about their daily commute. While most use their personal vehicles to get to-and-from work, others opted for walking, riding their bike, or public transit. “As job growth surges, so does the traffic and stress associated with a long, congestion filled commute,” says Sell. “Many [triangle] area commuters are looking for alternatives.”

The Best Workplaces for Commuters (BWC) Program is a resource, offered by TJCOG, that workplaces can depend on for best practices, education opportunities, and national workplace recognition.

The following is a post by Mary Sell:

Best Workplaces for Commuters recognizes the essential nature of good transportation resources in our growing region and the comprehensive strategic planning, education and outreach programming needed to support it. This approach has helped to create a holistic strategy to mitigate the impact of increasingly congested roadways and provide alternatives for commuters that decide a bike or bus may be more their style. BWC provides recognition to workplaces that have taken great steps to encourage modal shifts, serves as a regional resource, and ultimately works to expand upon individual actions to create a triangle-wide impact.

Currently, the Triangle Best Workplaces for Commuters program has over 30 participating organizations, with over 100,000 employees combined. As the program grows, so do the opportunities to strategically advance alternative transportation modes in our region. Take BWC members Citrix or Red Hat for example; each has onsite bike sharing and secure parking for those that commute in via 2-wheels. Or member American Tobacco Campus and their forward thinking decision to provide transit amenities to tenants to decrease the need for costly parking deck installations. Each BWC employer has unique transportation benefits that helped qualify them for national designation and continues to add to the regional conversation about how to attract and retain the best possible talent. Our role here at the COG is to recognize this activity and act as a facilitator and convener to help spread these good ideas as quickly as we can to provide the most impact that we can. Through working groups, regional events, and networking opportunities, BWC provides an embedded network of employers that value what their employees value – a better commute and a better way of life.

We all have ideas that we can learn from each other. Why not approach these challenges with collaborative partnerships to help our entire region? After all, one less car on the road benefits not only the alternative commuter enjoying their newly minted bike ride to work, but also the driver that has one less car beside them as they set in for their daily trek into the office. As the Triangle J region grows, so too does our need for innovative solutions. Best Workplaces for Commuters is just one of the many regional tools helping us to advance alternative transportation modes and decrease the dependence regionally on a car-centric way of life.

Learn more about our Best Workplaces for Commuter program here: http://www.trianglebwc.org/

PARTICLE FALLS is a free, public art display designed by artist and scientist Andrea Polli. Enjoy this exhibit any night from March 24th to April 23rd in downtown Raleigh.

See air particulate pollution come to light before your eyes as real-time air quality readings are translated into an animated, colorful projection of light resembling a flowing waterfall. Watch the colors change as pollution rises and falls throughout the evening. The display begins each night at dusk on a 5-story building across the street from the Raleigh Times Bar (located at 14 E Hargett St).

Co-sponsored by Clean Air Carolina, North Carolina Department of Transportation, Novozymes, Empire Properties, Growth Energy, and Foursaken Media, this five-week event hopes to educate the public about the presence and impact of particle pollution in North Carolina and the alternative clean transportation options consumers can choose to help keep North Carolina’s air cleaner and healthier for us all.

Learn more at www.particlefallsRAL.org

With Black History Month soon ending, we wanted to take a moment to remember one historical figure we all learned about in grade school whose impact extended far beyond just peanuts.

Beyond his fame for peanut applications, George Washington Carver’s research and influence extended across the entire industry of agricultural chemistry. His career aim was to give farmers in the South alternatives to cotton and create new markets to break into, and ultimately became an early proponent of environmentalism.

Carver’s commitment to a cleaner, greener planet is paying dividends today, and while many are familiar with much of Carver’s legacy, you may be surprised to learn that he also dabbled in automotive fuels. Carver is widely credited with discovering a method for turning soybeans into oil, which today is a common feedstock for making biodiesel.

His acclaim as an agricultural chemist eventually caught the attention of Henry Ford, another historic innovator, who was turning to agriculture to learn more about biofuels, which, like Carver, he considered the “fuel of the future.”

While Ford was designing early concepts of the Model T car, he sought out Carver’s expertise in agricultural chemistry to help make his biofuel vision a reality. The two developed a friendship and working relationship that would last the rest of their lives, with Ford saying Carver was “the greatest of all my inspiring friends.”

Ford would eventually design a car that could run on ethanol, a renewable biofuel made from plants, and in 1942 after years of correspondence, showcased a vehicle built with a plastic body made from Carver’s soybeans. The hard work, foresight, and resourcefulness he shared with Carver continues to benefit us all today.

All these years later, we’re continuing to build off of Ford and Carver’s automotive and agricultural legacies in the field of biofuels. In fact, ethanol is in 97% of all gasoline sold in the United States. The same fuel that Carver and Ford envisioned is now helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 43% and significantly cutting our reliance on foreign oil.

More and more, drivers are gaining access to fuels with higher blends of ethanol such as E15, which has 5% more of the biofuel than regular gasoline.

By adding more ethanol to our fuel, we’re able to take advantage of all the biofuel has to offer. That translates to lower greenhouse gas emissions and less wear and tear on our engines. It also is higher octane, which means more horsepower at a favorable price point.

All told, E15 is a 21st century fuel that is fit for use in all cars made 2001 and newer. Drivers across America have traveled over 500 million miles on this high-performance fuel.

Carver and Ford would be excited to learn that Americans are using more biofuels than ever before. Their vision of a world powered by ethanol is becoming reality.

To find an E15 retailer near you, visit GetEthanol.com.

May is Asthma Awareness Month. Join the Mecklenburg County Asthma Coalition (MCAC) in their efforts to raise awareness and support for those affected by asthma by signing up for the 2017 Community Asthma Walk on May 6th.

The walk will begin and end at the Hauser Alumni Pavilion at UNC – Charlotte. Pre-registration is available until May 1. On-site registration will be from 8:00am to 9:00am and the Asthma Walk will start at 10:00am with snacks, fellowship, and tabletops to follow. There will be free parking at the Student Union Deck.

To sponsor or donate to this event contact Kelly Reeves.

For an interactive map including directions to UNC – Charlotte, click here.

Key steps toward accelerating the utilization of electric vehicles and the charging infrastructure needed to support them have been taken in the form of a national network of alternative fuel and electric charging corridors enabling coast to coast zero emission mobility on our nation’s highways.

Forty-eight of the 55 routes (spanning 35 states) that have been designated to accommodate one or more alternative fuel vehicles (including: electric, hydrogen, propane, and natural gas) will support electric vehicles specifically. In North Carolina, I-40 and I-85 will have corridors providing access to public Level 2 or DC Fast Charge stations from Raleigh to Hickory, Black Mountain to Asheville, and Raleigh to Gastonia. These charge stations will be five miles from the highway, with 50 miles between stations.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced that road signs along the corridors will reduce range anxiety by pointing out where drivers can stop to charge their electric vehicles.

To learn more about the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) announcement under the U.S. DOT’s Federal Highway Administration, click here.

The Southeast AFV Demonstration Initiative (SADI) is a US Department of Energy project focused on the increased adoption of Alternative Fuels in the Southeast region of the United States. Project partners for this grant include Alliance Autogas, ICOM, Palmetto Gas, Penske, Mainstay Fuel Technologies and Johnston North America.

Clean Cities Coalitions throughout South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee will work with partners to provide opportunities for fleets to demonstrate a wide range of alternative fuel vehicles with the intent of providing a hands on learning opportunity for regional organizations to experience these technologies first hand. As a part of the project, education partners will compile best practices, lessons learned and reference a telematics dataset to provide supplementary information for fleets considering alternative fuel technology applications.

For more information please visit SADIdemo.org or contact Mary Sell at msell@tjcog.org or 919-558-9400

Please join us on October 6th at 2pm EST to hear the latest on the VW EPA settlement with $4.7 billion slated for alternative fuel vehicles and infrastructure.  Be prepared to take advantage of this opportunity.  In addition, we will be discussing cutting edge fuels and technologies that some of the top fleets in the country are using today.

The 2014 #1 Best Fleet Winner will be discussing their Smart Cities Program and the $140 million raised through public and private partnerships to support it.

The 2013 #1 Green Fleet Winner will be discussing how to handle big data with new dash boards, as well as their experience using renewable natural gas and renewable diesel fuels.

The 2015 #10 Green Fleet Award Winner will be discussing their experience with renewable diesel fuel.

Additional technologies will be covered.

Sponsored in part by XL Hybrids and Neste.

Register for this upcoming webinar here.

Do you know an outstanding person, business, organization, or fleet dedicated to reducing their transportation related emissions?  Nominate them for a Mobile Clean Air Renewable Energy (CARE) award!  The MobileCARE awards are an effort to recognize exemplary individual and organizational efforts in North Carolina aimed at reducing transportation related emissions, promoting fuel diversity, and encouraging efficiency through clean transportation technologies.  Nominations are open until September 21 and winners will be announced in October. To nominate, find out more information, or see previous winners, visit the NC Clean Energy Technology Center’s Mobile CARE Awards page.  Questions or completed nominations can be sent to Matt Abele.

Homepage photo courtesy of NREL.