August 2008 - Posts
I'm winding up the last hours of the annual
Association for Commuter Transportation International Conference in Atlanta. The sessions have been fascinating, but two stick out in particular: One on "telling your story," and another on initatives being undertaken by other countries.
The "telling your story" session was essentially two hours of basic marketing information, but presented in a refreshing way. It got me thinking about what, exactly, is the RIDE Solutions story; or, another way to put it, what are the stories of the commuters in our region, how are their stories (and thus their problems) unique, and how can RIDE Solutions best offer a happy ending? I don't have the answers yet, but it is something I'll be thinking about a lot on the flight home.
Of perhaps more interest was a presentation by Paul Minett of
Trip Convergence Ltd. regarding casual carpooling (what he calls flexible carpooling), or
slugging:
Slugging, also known as casual carpooling, is the practice of forming ad-hoc, informal carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking. While the practice is most common and most publicized in the congested Washington, D.C. area (where it is primarily used by commuters who live in Northern Virginia), slugging is also used in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and other U.S. cities
I find the process fascinating, since the whole machinery of the RIDE Solutions program is based on the assumption that carpooling only happens once participants are comfortable with each other, and here is a phenomenon of complete strangers getting together for the sole purpose, largely, of avoiding tolls. When I spend so much time trying to help organize carpools from a top-down approach, here is a system that has not only maintained but expanded, all completely self-organized. I will begin working with Paul, I hope, to examine the possibility of establishing or encouraging this in the NewVa area, particularly between the Salem Park and Ride and Virginia Tech, to offer yet another option to commuters in the region.
A few days ago I was talking with a neighbor of mine who is in the homebuilding industry, and the conversation turned to "being Green." One of the problems he saw was an increasing tendency for companies to market goods or services as environmentally friendly, often in contradictory ways, and sometimes with
spurious or patently false justification. Some green products, he provided as an example, were identified as such because the trucks they were shipped on might use biofuels, but that was the extent of their pedigree. In other cases, customers were unsure of or had differing ideas of what constituted being green – one customer chose a certain roofing material because it was made of recycled wood; another customer chose a pure-wood version of the same material because the recycled material used various glues and epoxies to hold the recycled bits together. Both materials were marketed as being environmentally friendly, but for very different reasons.
Consumers face the same choice regarding transportation. Should I invest in a hybrid, or track down a used Geo Metro? Should my company move to biodiesel? Do I have to go deeper into debt to buy a more fuel efficient car, and if I can’t afford it, am I simply stuck? Generally questions of “green driving” are about the technologies involved – hybrids, hydrogen cells, electric vehicles,
B5 or B20, golf carts – and the variety of choices and impacts can be confusing and overwhelming.
That’s why TDM doesn’t really talk about transportation technologies, but rather transportation choices and transportation behavior. We talk about mode – Single Occupant Vehicle (SOV) vs. High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV). The environmental impact made by TDM isn’t in helping commuters choose among the multitude of green technologies, but making small but significant changes in commuting behavior altogether. Whether you move from a 15 MPG SUV to a 25 MPG minivan or a 35 MPG hybrid, none of them will have the impact of carpooling three days a week and not driving at all, or taking the bus three days a week, or doing your shopping trips on your bicycle. If you’re already un debt up to your eyeballs and there is no way you can sell your Expedition and buy a Smart, that’s fine; just make try to put one or two more people in those seats every morning, or take the bus when you go to the mall rather than driving along.
On the macro scale, TDM positively affects the environment by encouraging participation across the range of potential modes, thus making each mode more efficient and aggregating lots of little behavior changes into one massive impact, all using existing technologies, existing infrastructure, existing commuters. This is particularly true in the facilitation of carpools, where the ridematching services we provide might be the only way that carpoolers have of meeting with each other. Through education, incentives, and services, TDM helps commuters push aside the question of green products altogether and gets down to a very basic question – what are my alternatives?
Basically, every trip you don’t take is cleaner than the one you do, no matter what you do it in. That’s what TDM does.
Over the next several days, I hope to offer a series of brief posts about Transportation Demand Management (TDM) - the technical name for what RIDE Solutions does by advocating carpooling, bicycling, walking and public transit. TDM touches on a number of issues, not the least of which are energy and the environment; this is where even modest TDM efforts on a local level, which may have little to know impact on the traditional target of TDM strategies - traffic congestion - contribute to a broader national and global goal of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and protecting the environment. For confirmation, look no further than the Climate Change Guru himself, Al Gore:
Carpooling is among the most efficient solutions out there for cutting back on your personal contribution to greenhouse gases. If just one million more people carpooled every day, it would avoid approximately 20 million pounds of carbon dioxide from direct fuel savings alone -- every day. Carpooling also reduces congestion, which makes every other vehicle on the road more efficient. It reduces the need for more lanes, and it reduces vehicle wear and tear, saving significant resources down the line. As an added benefit, using carpool lanes can drastically cut down on commute time
If you are suspicious of the science behind climate change, ignore for a moment the carbon output from your tailpipe and think about everything else that it generates: particle pollution and ozone-causing volatile compounds that lead to haze and smog. If anything, the local air quality impact from vehicle emissions should be of more concern, particularly for residents of the Roanoke Valley, where we're flirting with non-attainment in ozone pollution and getting pretty cozy with particulate matter as well. The science behind air quality and health is largely undisputed -
lung disease, stroke, cancer, emphysema, broad cardiovascular and even neurological problems have been attributed to ozone and particle pollution. Vehicle emissions are the single largest contributor of these pollutants in most areas; nationally, 50% of all air-quality related pollution is generated by tailpipes. Even a small reduction can have a remarkable impact.
Keep on eye on this space for further exploration of the role of TDM in the Roanoke and New River Valleys,