Big Blue Bus’s big green yard

[tags]santa monica, big blue bus, green la girl, leed[/tags]

Credit: Green L.A. Girl. Clicking on the image goes to “Big Blue Bus breaks ground on green maintenance facility.”

Siel, the Green L.A. Girl went to Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus’s celebration for expanding its bus yard, and making it more environmentally friendly.

The downtown Santa Monica yard is expanding to 66,000 square feet, as the agency is planning to buy more — and possibly larger articulated — buses. Santa Monica city council members and employees of the muni grabbed big blue shovels — no, really — and dug into the big brown dirt to kick off construction for a big green bus yard.

Siel says:

Green components range from using recycling construction materials to water-efficient landscaping with a gray water and storm water management system to using light-colored concrete and roofing to keep things cooler. Plus, recycled carpets and other items’ll be used in the offices, which’ll have dual glazed, low-e glazing and no [volatile organic compounds] off-gassing materials.

The city hopes to get the yard LEED certified — a set of standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council for a construction project to use energy-efficient and environmentally friendly materials and methods — by the completion of construction in 2010.

Interestingly, Santa Monica is not in the lead with LEED. Santa Clarita Transit has the first LEED-certified bus yard in Southern California, completed in 2005.