SUSTAIN: Greener Communities

SUSTAIN: Scoring to Understand Sustainable Transportation Attributes and Indicators

Transportation must be an important part of any community’s sustainability and climate change strategy, since the transportation sector accounts for the largest and fastest growing piece of statewide greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts. As part of its broader Staying on Track framework and benchmark indicators report on achieving a sustainable transportation system in Greater Boston, the Dukakis Center has developed a scoring system to help Massachusetts cities and towns better understand the sustainability of their current transportation sector.

The SUSTAIN scoring system considers ten municipality-level attributes of environmental sustainability sorted into three broad areas: place, behavior, and fleet cleanliness. Municipalities are ranked compared to each other on each of the ten attributes and assigned a “SUSTAIN Score.” The map below shows the bottom, middle, and top thirds of the municipalities according to their SUSTAIN score. The map also shows the 103 Commonwealth communities currently designated as “Green Communities,” which have met specific criteria for designation as clean energy leaders and are therefore eligible for municipal renewable power and energy efficiency grants.

For more details about the variables used as well as the coding strategy, download our SUSTAIN Methodology Draft.

The Dukakis Center thanks the Barr Foundation for its support of the Dukakis Center’s work on sustainable transportation including the development of both the Staying On Track report and the SUSTAIN community transportation scoring system.

Click the map for larger view.