CityStories / City Profiles / Large Cities / Dallas, Texas

But that trend is changing: Once exclusively an automobile town, Dallas saw ridership figures for public transit skyrocket in 2008. Over the next five years, Dallas Area Rapid (DART) will increase rail lines by 90 miles, which they expect will double the ridership from already 400,000 passenger rides a day.

But in Dallas, it's not just local commuting that's contributing to the city's emission levels. Dallas is an inland port and trucking transportation hub. Through the Blue Skyways Collaborative, a voluntary initiative to reduce the impact of transportation, Dallas is coordinating with large corporations (like Wal-Mart) and other states (including Louisiana and New Mexico) to keep their truck fleets running clean. And since May 2008, during the “ozone season” that runs from April through October, big trucks (more than 14,000 pounds) are strictly forbidden to idle for more than five minutes in the city.

Furthermore, the City of Dallas now obtains 40 percent of its fuel for electricity from wind, putting it behind only Texas neighbor Houston on the EPA's Top 20 Local Government list of annual green power usage.

For these efforts and others, Dallas was the first city in the country to receive certification to the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 14001:2004 standards for its Environmental Management System. In January, 2008, the city launched greendallas.net, detailing what this city is doing to go green. For starters, the city completed it's greenhouse gas inventory in 2005, which will serve as a benchmark for future emissions reductions goals.