Sustainable Williston Meets Thursday 12/1 at 7:15 PM

Sustainable Williston will hold our regular first Thursday meeting December 1st at 7:15 PM at the Dorothy Alling Library.

We’ll discuss the town plan, future social and outreach events, and more. Everyone who lives or works in Williston and is interested in sustainability and the environment is welcome.

Free transportation throughout the area Saturday

Here’s a note from Green Mountain Transit (GMT), formerly CCTA. This Saturday, they’re encouraging shopping at small businesses throughout the area and offering free bus rides wherever you need to go. This can be especially handy if you want to go to downtown Burlington, but don’t want to have to park.

Burlington bus station

By the way, they’ve introduced a new app for smartphones where you can see where your bus is at any moment. There’s a Web page for it, too. They’ve also built a great new bus station in Burlington, in case you haven’t seen it yet. It offers sheltered outdoor seating, free Wi-Fi, bathrooms, indoor seating, a ticket agent, a water fountain, and countdown signs that tell you how long it will be until your bus arrives. In addition to GMT routes, the station also serves Greyhound, Vermont Translines, and Megabus.

You can catch GMT buses at Taft’s corners, in Williston village, and at some other locations locally.

Enjoy GMT’s “Free Ride Day” on Small Business Saturday

For the second year in a row, Green Mountain Transit is having a free ride day on Small Business Saturday, November 26, 2016. Take the bus to local shops on this Small Business Saturday and help us support our community.

This system wide free ride day is also our thank you to our riders this holiday season. Public transportation (and FREE on Small Business Saturday) is a great asset to all! We would love for everyone to be aware and utilize the service!

The mission of GMT is to promote and operate safe, convenient, accessible, innovative and sustainable public transportation services in the northwest and central Vermont regions, that reduces congestion and pollution, encourages transit oriented development and enhances the quality of life for all.

Meeting Williston’s Energy Needs into the Future

If we as a state and we as a town are going to get to 90% renewables by 2050 to counter global warming, we will have to address two main energy needs: our transportation methods and our building heating methods. Our vehicles will need to be electric and our homes will need to be electric and biomass. These are daunting challenges split into two components: the devices that we will use and the electric sources of our energy. The first part will be met by the ingenuity of our people and the market place filling our needs as climate change becomes more dire. The second part is something that we as a town can address. We can calculate the energy requirements of the town, now and for our future needs; identify the best sites for wind and solar, have a discussion and come to consensus on which sites meet our criteria the best, pre-permit them and figure out how to build them out (private venture; public/private or town owned). The Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission has funds to help towns conduct studies of this nature and is something we should take advantage. Creating power in our town and state will keep about $850M in Vermont; help fight global warming; create local, well-paying jobs; make us a more resilient community and control energy prices going forward. I am suggesting that a group of SW members spearhead this effort to create this plan or form a Town Energy Committee to do this.

Want to track your bus in real time? Your phone knows where it is

routeshout

Green Mountain Transit (former Chittenden County Transit Authority, which merged a while back with Green Mountain Transit Authority in central Vermont) has just introduced a new feature: using their app on your smartphone, you can track your bus in real time. Wondering if your bus is going to be late? Need to figure out when the next bus will depart from your stop? Check out GMT’s announcement, below:

Green Mountain Transit has introduced the new RouteShout 2.0 mobile app. You won’t ever have to wonder where your bus is again!

Download our new RouteShout 2.0 mobile app. Plan your commute, set reminders, and receive notifications. The RouteShout 2.0 app gives you access to manage your commute so you can enjoy peace of mind.

Features:

• Know when your next bus is arriving.
• Plan trips with ease.
• See exactly where your bus is on the map in real-time.
• See banner alerts right in the app.

To view RouteShout 2.0 on your compute r or device: http://ridegmt.com/download-routeshout-here/.

The mission of GMT is to promote and operate safe, convenient, accessible, innovative and sustainable public transportation services in the northwest and central Vermont regions, that reduces congestion and pollution, encourages transit oriented development and enhances the quality of life for all.