Benefiting You, Your Community and the Environment
It doesn't take much. All those small decisions you make every day about transportation can add up in no time. You have plenty of options. By choosing to ride your bike to school, walk to the grocery store, ride-share to work or take transit to get to the hockey game, you're helping yourself, the community and the environment in countless ways.
How Being TravelSmart Benefits You
- Save money: By not taking your car out as much, you'll save on maintenance, gas and parking. And if you take transit, there are different passes you may qualify for that save even more money on your fare.
- Explore: By incorporating active transportation into your day, you can reconnect and may be introduced to different areas of your community you'd never otherwise see if you were just driving a direct route.
- Feel great: By cycling and walking more, you'll enjoy health benefits such as;
- Reducing risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and some types of cancer
- Reducing blood pressure if you already have high blood pressure
- Reducing body weight and getting toned
- Reducing feelings of anxiety and depression
- Increasing emotional and mental well-being
- Building and maintaining healthy bones, muscles and joints
How Being TravelSmart Benefits Your Community
- Help ease traffic congestion: By not taking your car - at least not every day - you help reduce traffic, noise and pollution in your neighbourhood.
- Make it safer: By having more 'eyes and ears' on the street from people walking and cycling, you can help increase overall security and basic social rapport with your neighbours.
- Reduce road accidents: By reducing the amount of cars in your community, you can dramatically decrease the number of road incidents.
- Help save lives: By helping to improve air quality you could help prevent one of the 15-150 deaths that occur every year in Metro Vancouver, due to air pollution.
Produce massive results with the smallest of changes
How Being TravelSmart Benefits the Environment
- Produce massive results with the smallest of changes: If every Canadian left their car at home just one day a week, we'd save about 3.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year – the equivalent of taking about 800,000 cars off the road.
- Positively impact air quality and help Canada reach GHG emission reduction targets: The average car emits four tonnes of CO2 every year. Personal transportation alone is the largest source of GHG emissions in Canada, accounting for about 30%.
Do you have a story to share, or would you like to start a conversation about being TravelSmart? Leave a comment below with your ideas, experiences or question to other users.