article on car pooling
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Car pooling, also known as ride-sharing or lift-sharing, can save you big bucks on gas, wear and tear on your vehicle, oil resources and reduce all the associated nasty environmental impact associated with driving. But wait, there’s more!..
When you drive to work, are you alone or do you have room for other passengers? Have you ever noticed how many others around you are driving on their own too? In Australia, 83% people who drove to work or study in 2003 did not have a passenger. (ABS Social Trends, 2003). In the USA, single occupant commuting is around 75% according to census data.
There are millions of us who engage in solitary travel to and from work; driving billions of miles each year, spending a stack of cash on gas and pumping tons of emissions into the atmosphere.
According to the SightLine Insitute (single passenger statistics):
– A small car emits around .59 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile
– A medium car emits around 1.1 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile
– An SUV/4 wheel emits around 1.5
If public transport isn’t for you and you’ve rejected the idea of car pooling in the past for whatever reasons, technology has provided more far more choice, flexibility and efficiency to the concept – perhaps it’s time to consider it again?
As mentioned, you don’t necessarily have to have a car to participate in a lift sharing arrangement. In these cases you should plan to contribute cash to the driver to help cover his or her costs.
Formal carpooling is thought to have emerged in mid-1970s, likely due to the oil crisis at that time. It was a different sort of crisis back then and what we face now is far more serious. Our crisis isn’t so much about politics or oil cartels; it’s about a resource that’s running out and one that plays a major role in global warming – oil.
While the days of plentiful, easy to extract crude oil are just about over; there will be still enough around for some years to come to push us well over the brink into runaway global warming. Unavoidable change is already occurring to our climate, but it’s within the power of each of us to do our little bit to reduce emissions – and our collective efforts can make a difference as to how bad things get.
Car pooling advantages
Save money
Just putting aside the gloom and doom aspect of the environmental impact of fossil fuels; consider even the cost saving aspect. I’ve been reading a fair bit on car pooling today and it hasn’t been uncommon to read stories of people who save a couple of hundred dollars a month in transport costs by sharing a ride with someone else. In some cities, you can also save on tolls and parking if your vehicle has multiple occupants.
It’s not just the cost of gas, tolls and parking, but city driving is notorious for causing wear on vehicles – all the stopping and starting wears out engines, brakes and gearboxes, not to mention tire wear. According to the American Automobile Association, it costs an average of 26.2 cents per mile to drive a car; and that’s just gas and wear and tear combined.
Decongests roads
According to a recent US study, “Commuting in America”:
– U.S. drivers wasted 4.2 billion hours sitting in traffic in 2005
– Traffic delays chewed through 2.9 billion gallons of fuel
– In Los Angeles, the average driver wastes 72 hours per year going nowhere.
If everyone car pooled, imagine the many hundreds of thousands of vehicles that would be off the road each day. This would lessen traffic congestion, making trips faster, cutting fuel and car maintenance costs even further. Some places even have roads with designated lanes for multiple occupant vehicles and I expect we’ll see more of this in the years ahead.
Social/emotional
Through sharing a ride, you’ll meet other people. Our online world is steadily disconnecting people and that can be unhealthy for many folks. For some people, there’s nothing like a pep session before the daily grind and a counselling session immediately afterwards :).
Also, if you find driving to work stressful, car pooling can alleviate the frustration in travelling to and from the workplace. You may even find time to carry out other tasks during the drive instead, such as preparing for meetings etc.