Friday, March 12, 2010, 12:17pm PST | Modified: July 23, 2010, 11:26 AM

Portland ranked greenest U.S. city

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The Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton metro area ranked No. 1 among 43 U.S. metro areas in a report on America’s greenest cities.

The “Green Cities Index” ranks metro areas on a variety of environmental factors, including traffic congestion, transit use, water quality, carbon emissions, LEED-certified projects and number of “green” jobs.

The index was compiled by the Business Courier of Cincinnati, which is owned by American City Business Journals, the parent company of the Portland Business Journal.

The index draws on data from a variety of government and research agencies.

For the index, the paper evaluated the 40 markets in which American City Business Journals publishes newspapers, plus Los Angeles, where the company operates a business-news website, and Indianapolis and Cleveland.

The index looked at such variables as commuting habits of residents, travel time and fuel use, and air and water quality.

Second on the Green Cities list was the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif., MSA. Honolulu ranked third. Austin, Texas, and Boston rounded out the top five.

The Portland region received high rankings for having the second most LEED-certified building projects in the country and for having minimal sprawl — Portland ranked fourth in the sprawl index behind San Francisco, Boston and Honolulu.

Portland’s poorest showing came in the ranking for commute travel time, where it came in 21st. At 19th, Austin was the only metro area in the green top five with a better travel-time ranking.

The city with the No. 1 travel time ranking was Wichita, Kan. Not surprisingly, Witchita ranked No. 43 for use of public transportation. Portland ranked eighth for public transportation use.

A searchable version of the database is available on the Business Courier Web site: http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/datacenter/green_cities.html