by Karen Cochrane

In the most visible step yet of the university’s commitment to achieve eventual climate neutrality, the Department of Parking and Transportation has purchased two shuttle buses that are running on 100 percent biodiesel fuel.

The buses, which transport riders from University Park to the Engineering Center, were purchased at a price of approximately $52,000 each.

“Those buses are the first vehicles at FIU to run on biodiesel fuel,” said Bill Foster, director of Parking and Transportation. “Eventually, all of our diesel vehicles at the university will run on at least 20 percent biodiesel fuel, but we didn’t want to wait on that.”

The buses aren’t the only environmental initiative being rolled out by the department. On July 1, Foster and his colleagues will debut a carpool program that features an online matching program.

“While carpool programs tend to work well at other universities, they haven’t done so well in Miami, historically,” says Foster, who has been at FIU for six years. “I’m hopeful this program will achieve some measure of success, in part because it’s so easy to use and easy to find riders with similar schedules and traffic routes.”

The university will be promoting the program heavily in the coming weeks. Riders in the program will receive special carpool decals and new preferred parking spaces will be available to participants. Additionally, the department is considering drawings and other promotional activities to drum up interest in the new program.

Foster says Parking and Transportation, which is an auxiliary, purchased the software for $24,000. It costs another $4,000 annually to maintain. One of the program’s many convenient features is that it tracks automatically the environmental benefits gained based upon number of participants in the program and number of fewer cars on the road. The importance of such a statistic is not lost on Foster.

“Transportation is one of seven items specifically addressed in the Presidents Climate Commitment,” he says. “We like the fact in Parking and Traffic that we can have an immediate positive impact on the university’s sustainability efforts.”