Incessant Expressions

While there isn’t much information coming out of the 3rd annual Florida Farm to Fuel conference, it was announced last week that Orlando’s LYNX bus lines will be switching to biofuels entirely by Fall 2009. The transport authority serves much of the Central Florida region but has its highest traffic in Orlando, no doubt due to both the University of Central Florida and the numerous theme parks in the town. I see dozens of these buses when we go to Orlando so this will help their local economy quite a bit and will help cut down on their growing smog problem.

It’s reported by LYNX’s CEO that they will not only be switching their buses to biodiesel, they’ll also be building their own manufacturing and processing plant for making the fuels. This will greatly cut down on external costs for LYNX and will create a number of green jobs in the area. Movements like this will undoubtedly help convince Gov. Crist and his cabinet that we, Floridians that is, don’t need any new off shore drilling projects to more imports to sustain transportation, especially in the larger cities. If this LYNX project proves successful, I’m almost positive that transport in other cities like Tampa, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Gainesville, and Jacksonville will want to convert to similar methods if not the identical ones using the same contractors. I know Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Gainesville could see huge savings in public transportation costs since two are huge college towns (Miami and Gainesville) and two have heavily trafficked bus systems as it is now (Miami and Ft. Lauderdale).

If this proves more successful than they realize, hopefully the cities can also convince their local cab companies to switch to alternative fuel sources as that would help immensely as well. With night life such a huge part in some of the larger cities in Florida, there are hundreds of cabs in use late at night and even more during the day, even here in Boca where more and more people are driving less. When I was living in Ft. Lauderdale, I would see a few dozen cabs on the way to school during the afternoon and I would only drive about 5 miles. I hope the savings accrued by LYNX will be a model to other transport systems both statewide and nationwide.

Tags:   biodiesel · environmentalismNo Comments