Carpooling Blues

This is a story about struggling to live our values.

Several years ago, Dodge offered an incentive program to its employees to purchase hybrid cars. If you visited our office now, you would likely see many Toyota and Honda hybrids in the parking lot. In fact, when the local Toyota dealership had a waiting list for the Prius and no cars to show potential buyers, they would send people to our parking lot to see the variety of colors and to get an up close look at the car.

There’s no doubt that driving a hybrid helps to assuage the guilt we feel about driving so many miles to and from work every day, but there’s also no doubt that we could make more of an effort to share rides and further reduce our emissions.

This is a struggle we are sure most people feel: trying to live your values by being more environmentally aware is often not an easy choice between what is “good” (e.g. carpooling) and what is “bad” (e.g. driving a gas guzzling car with no passengers), but most often a compromise between what you want to do and what you can do within reason (e.g. carpool when your schedule allows).

And sometimes, no matter how much you might like to make more eco-friendly choices, the options can be very limited. For example, you may wish you could live closer to work, but housing near your office is unaffordable. You may wish you could take public transportation to work, but it’s either not available, the station is too far from your office, or taking the train triples your commute time.

Furthermore, office buildings are often isolated from the community so that typical lunchtime errands require a car. Until we move into our new office in downtown Morristown later this year, walking to lunch, for example, or to the bank or the post office is not possible.
 
As gas prices and tolls continue to rise, however, and as we become more aware of the impact of car emissions on climate change, we are being forced to re-evaluate our driving habits, and interest in carpooling and car sharing is, fortunately, increasing.

In addition to the carpooling options (e.g. carpooling with your co-workers; carpooling with your neighbors; signing up for a carpooling program that already exists in your area), many US and international cities have car sharing programs. Car sharing is often for people in urban areas, or for college students, who don’t have a need for a car on a daily basis, but need a car occasionally. Car sharing is an excellent way to have access to a car without having to make payments or buy insurance. Programs like Zipcar and Flexcar, CityCarShare in the San Francisco Bay area, and PhillyCarShare, and Chicago’s I-GO car sharing program offer you access to a car (often a hybrid) for a small membership fee and have easy reservation systems. 

There are also bike share programs around the globe as well. New York is exploring the idea. Meanwhile, you can find active community bike programs in Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Barcelona, as well as places like Portland, Oregon and many university campuses in the US.

Of course, the reality is that car sharing and bike sharing programs are more readily available in urban areas where getting from point A to point B is considerably less distance.

If sharing rides is simply not an option for you, take heart; there are still many ways to reduce your carbon footprint, and reduce your guilt. Here are a few:

• Drive the speed limit to increase your fuel efficiency - Gas mileage generally decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph. As a rule of thumb, you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas.
• If possible, work some time from home and/or stagger your work hours to avoid rush hour - you'll spend less time sitting in traffic, and you will consume less fuel.
• Keep your car maintained - Replacing a clogged air filter can improve your car’s gas mileage by as much as 10 percent. Additionally, you can improve your gas mileage by as much as 3 percent by keeping your tires inflated to the proper pressure.
• The next time you are ready to buy a new car, consider a hybrid.