New dashboard tracks electric vehicle rollout in Mass.
Photo | Sam Bonacci
A 2016 electric vehicle event at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
There's a new way to track the slow but critical progress toward slashing greenhouse gas emissions on the Bay State's roadways.
The state Department of Transportation launched an interactive online dashboard compiling data about passenger vehicles registered in Massachusetts, including whether they run on fossil fuels, electricity or a hybrid power source.
Data also include estimates of vehicle miles traveled and average mileage, all broken down by individual municipalities, providing insight into geographic trends as officials push to green the transportation system.
No city or town has a higher share of clean vehicles within its borders than Lexington, where 14.2 percent of registered vehicles are zero-emission or hybrid models, the dashboard shows.
Altogether, Massachusetts had nearly 69,000 zero-emission passenger vehicles and 153,000 hybrid passenger vehicles registered as of Jan. 1, compared to 4.6 million passenger fossil fuel vehicles. On the commercial side, MassDOT counted nearly 330,000 fossil fuel vehicles, 3,000 hybrid vehicles and 357 zero-emission vehicles at the start of the year.
"This tool will allow us to track our progress toward our climate goals as it relates to vehicle usage, and the data collected will help guide our decision making around how to allocate resources and investments across the Commonwealth to achieve a greener and healthier future," said Melissa Hoffer, the Healey administration's climate chief.
The transportation sector accounts for about 42 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts, which is working to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The Baker administration said last year that state officials need to get at least 200,000 passenger electric vehicles on the road by 2025 and 900,000 in use by 2030 to fulfill decarbonization commitments.
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