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This Earth Day, Go Green – and Save Some Too!

April 17, 2017

Earthday spotlight 2016

This week, we’re joining CTA, Metra and Pace to celebrate Earth Week, which ends in Earth Day on Saturday, April 22.

One of the best ways to celebrate and show the Earth you care, is by taking public transit – it’s the cleanest, greenest way to get around Chicagoland. If you don’t usually take public transit, Earth Week is the perfect time to ride and check out the benefits.

CTA, Metra and Pace are all dedicated to reducing their impact on the environment:


  • Pace is the first transit agency in the Chicago area and the third in the state to adopt CNG technology, a clean-burning fuel for its fleet.
  • CTA replaces the equivalent of about 400,000 vehicles on regional roads each weekday. A full eight-car CTA train replaces more than 600 cars, and a full 60-foot articulated CTA bus replaces more than 70 cars.
  • If the Metra trains stopped running, it’s been estimated we’d need to add 27 more lanes to our already crowded highways.

The benefits of public transportation go far beyond what’s happening in our region and benefit you even if you don’t ride:

  • Public transportation saves more than 4 billion gallons of gasoline, reducing U.S. customer costs by $10 billion annually.
  • 37 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions are avoided by taking public transit.
  • One person with a 20-mile round trip commute can reduce daily carbon emissions by 4,800 pounds per year by taking public transit.

As long as we’re talking about going green – another benefit of taking public transit is the “green” you save: the annual savings for a person in our region who switches from commuting by car to commuting by public transit is $11,415. Furthermore, the RTA’s Transit Benefit Fare Program can save riders up to 40 percent on commuting costs by deducting pre-tax funds from their paycheck to pay for their transit fares.

This Earth Week, show the Earth – and your wallet – that you care by riding public transit.

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