By Willis Mann

Baltimore has become the first city in the country to have installed a fleet of eco-friendly, electric hybrid busses to help people move around the city, cut down on greenhouse gasses, and avoid parking hassles, and best of all, you can ride these busses absolutely free.  That’s right – you don’t have to pay a dime to get around downtown on the Baltimore Circulator Busses.  Baltimore’s Circulator fleet consists of 21 busses that travel three assigned routes in the downtown area. The three routes (Green, Orange, and Purple): Connect different parts of the city in a way that makes it easy to plan a trip.

• The Orange Route: travels east-west on the heavily used Pratt/Lombard Street, Central Avenue and Baltimore Street corridor.
• The Purple Line: goes north-south along Charles, St. Paul, and Light Streets, which are also heavily traveled.
• The Green Route: operates just outside of downtown, connecting City Hall with the Johns Hopkins Medical Center via Broadway, Aliceanna, and President Streets.
• Fourth Route (the Star-Spangled Route): is being planned that will connect downtown with Fort McHenry utilizing Fort Street.  This route will become operational in 2012 to coincide with the War of 1812 bicentennial celebration.

For people attending the Baltimore 2013 DSA Conference, this means you have an Orange line bus stop right outside the Hilton Hotel.  This line goes past the popular Inner Harbor area, and if you want to go to another part of town, you can simply hop on the Purple line bus at Inner Harbor.  If you miss one bus, don’t worry.  Another one will come along in 10 minutes. Baltimore’s Circulator busses will be a God-send for conference attendees because it does away with the need to walk long distances to catch a bus, or worse yet, to pay for an expensive taxi.  These are just more reasons you should come to the Baltimore 2013 DSA Conference