Encouraging pooling
Encouraging pooling and how it can contribute to mobility management
Carpooling and vanpooling schemes help people who travel to a location, either regularly or on a one-off basis, to share a vehicle so as to reduce the total number of vehicles coming to the site.
In OPTIMUM², a vanpool scheme was successfully introduced at Amsterdam Southern Business Areas.
Carpooling is promoted at each OPTIMUM² site, yet great efforts have not been put in (on account of OPTIMUM²) since many carpool matching services exist that are readily available for employees.
When should you consider pooling measures?
Plotting on a map where site users come from will help to assess areas around a site that are have poor public transport but where there are concentrations of site users (e.g. employees, or patients using a hospital). Simple cheap software such as MS Mappoint can easily plot the location of postal and zip codes. Where these clusters include small numbers of site users then there will not be enough people to justify a new bus service so encouraging them to car pool instead can provide an alternative to driving alone.
Pooling is particularly suitable for users who live longer distances from the site (15 km or more, one way), who travel to and from the site at regular times, and who are motivated by saving money on fuel costs. Vanpooling can also appeal to those who want to reduce the stress of commuting and who might want to be able to work during their commute.
Vanpooling requires a greater amount of organisation than carpooling since, obviously, vehicles carrying 6-13 people are required. These can be leased by the employer and then the leasing and running costs borne entirely by the employer, by the employees, or a mixture of the two. Where the employer pays some of these costs, employees may incur tax, depending on the rules in your country. For example, in the UK, where one employee acts as the driver of a van and takes it home in the evenings and at weekends, she is taxed on the benefit that she is assumed to derive from having the vehicle available for private use. Alternatively, on occasion, employees themselves group together to rent a van (sometimes known as a minibus) and driver to get them to and from work, where they work the same shifts.
What can pooling achieve?
Carpooling can be an important element of site based mobility management, depending on the characteristics of the site – they are most useful where conventional public transport services are poor or non-existent, and they need to be introduced as part of a package of measures to have the most effect. They also have the advantage of being highly acceptable to site users since even people who do not use them think that they are a good idea and value the possibility that there is a carpool service that they could use; and they can help to solve accessibility problems at sites with poor public transport access and where not everyone in the workforce can afford a car.
An example of this is the Inchinnan Business Park near Glasgow Airport in Scotland, UK. Well-run carpooling schemes have been shown to reduce the percentage of staff driving alone to work by 5-8% at sites in Europe such as the headquarters of the bank Egg in Derby, England (see DfT, 2002). There are few measured results from vanpooling schemes in Europe but in the USA they have produced reductions in driving alone of 10-12% (Pratt, 2007).
How do I implement a carpooling scheme and what will it cost me?
The simplest carpool matching service costs virtually nothing – a notice on a workplace noticeboard where people can write up where they are travelling to/from and other people can ask to share that journey is the least that is required. Thereafter, any amount of promotion of the service can be carried out.
Many organisations now provide web-based carpool matching software to their users, so that someone can sign up online and the computer immediately finds them any other users in their area or en route who have also said that they would like to carpool. This software can be very cheap – one provider charges only US$10 per month for up to 500 registered carpool trips (see www.carpoolworld.com). Another provider is www.liftshare.com. In the Netherlands, numerous websites exist that offer 'free' rides, see www.carpooldate.nl, www.carpoolplein.nl en www.meerijden.nu
At sites with parking shortages, the incentive to carpool can be increased by reserving the most convenient parking spaces for carpools. This also increases the profile of carpooling and promotes it to other users. This makes the scheme more complicated, however, since some enforcement of the privilege is required although at some workplaces this enforcement may simply be informal, by employees. Many workplaces that promote carpooling also include a guaranteed, or emergency, ride home (GRH) for car- or vanpoolers so that in the event that they have to leave before, or stay after, their carpool partners are ready, then they can still get home. Pratt (2007) cites evidence to show that a GRH increases levels of carpooling. GRH services are highly valued but rarely used and so costs are limited to only €2-3 per regular site user per year.
For detailed information on how to set up a vanpooling scheme, and for advice on costs, see www.vipre.com – VIPRE is a specialist provider of vanpool services in the UK and the Netherlands.
References
DfT (UK Department for Transport) (2002) Making travel plans work – research report. DfT, London. Available at www.dft.gov.uk
Enoch M P (2003) Pooling together: Why vanpooling works in the US and the Netherlands, Traffic Engineering and Control, 44(1), January, 12-14.
Pratt, R. et al (2007) Traveller Response Handbook – Chapter Seven – TDM Measures. Transportation Research Board, Washington DC. |
