Carpooling

Carpooling Benefits and Incentives

The benefits of carpooling are that it saves fuel (one vehicle with multiple occupants rather than multiple single-occupant vehicles) and reduces traffic congestion, thereby reducing commuter costs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving highway air quality. It also reduces stress and improves personal time management for members, as they can attend to other tasks (reading, napping, listening to music, chatting, or doing paperwork) during the ride. It reduces wear and tear on the member automobiles that are not being used for that day's commute, and may allow members an automobile insurance premium reduction congruent with the reduction in miles driven on their own automobiles.

Effective carpooling depends on a set of common expectations shared by the members of the pool. When guidelines for wait times, notifications for an absence from the commute, and even personal comfort factors (like the interior temperature of the vehicle, the types of music or radio stations preferred, and whether food and beverages may be brought into the vehicle) are discussed and agreed to in advance, the probability of an arrangement that is successful in the long-term is increased.

[Page 59]Carpools may be formed on an ad hoc basis when neighbors or coworkers decide to share rides on a regular basis. However, given the benefits noted above, others, including employers, state transportation agencies, and metropolitan governments, have also taken an interest in promoting and supporting carpooling through various means, both structural and operational. Structural means include construction of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. Operational means include designation of existing lanes as HOV lanes restricted to carpools, vanpools, and buses; reductions in tolls or other forms of congestion pricing relief for carpools; technical assistance and financial support for organizing carpools; purchase of fleets of vans for vanpools; and public awareness campaigns to encourage shared commuting.

A common strategy to incentivize carpooling is the establishment of HOV lanes, and many metropolitan areas have such facilities. HOV facilities are restricted to vehicles carrying a minimum number of travelers, usually two, although the original restriction was often for a minimum of three travelers. A 2008 inventory by the Federal Highway Administration lists 345 HOV facilities in the United States, with the largest concentrations around the Twin Cities, San Francisco, Seattle–Tacoma, Los Angeles, and Houston. (It should be noted that each HOV segment is counted as a separate facility; a center city with highway approaches from the four cardinal directions might thus be counted as having four HOV facilities.) A variety of complicated pricing structures, dependent on time of day and number of occupants, are used in many regions to balance traffic flows between the HOV lanes and the main line.

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