Aug
19
Let’s get into a car pool
Filed Under Green Dioxide
Living in an urban space? Drive to work? Is the drive fun? If the answer to the first two questions is yes, the third is more likely to be in the negative.
Naturally. For one, traffic is on the rise in cities and towns worldwide, making driving a pain. And rising fuel costs are not really adding to make such journeys sound like fun either. Enter car or van pools.
Not a new concept, but its practice is highly limited. Company vans and buses are usually used to pick and drop staff who are way down in the pecking order. Anyone higher up in the hierarchy tends to use their own transport, if they can afford it. Does one need a tutorial on the carbon footprint left behind by the millions of cars zipping up and down to work?
Promote car pools. Bring together employees living close by to travel together. It will not require a rocket scientist to develop a simple software where employees can key in information about their residences and work schedules to get matched up with those filling in similar parameters. Might be a good idea to even throw in a field for a person to enter his or her oversleeping tendencies!!
Park and Ride
It might not always be feasible for employees to make effective transport pools. One can always designate common points where they reach by public transport, or in their own vehicles, and get on to a waiting office shuttle to take them further. Arrangements can always be made for secure parking of private vehicles at such points.
The Benefits
The principal benefit of transport pools are no doubt a reduction a fuel consumption leading to lower emissions. But such an exercise comes with a few bonus benefits too like:
- A more productive employee: Wouldn’t you be too if you had lower stress and fatigue levels after a journey to work, and had saved time and money in the process? Would you also not feel healthier?
- Some relief for the HR guys, as they might be able to attract better employees because of such practices. And the clamour for pay rise might be a bit more subdued as money saved through shared transport might effectively be money earned.
- Lesser traffic on the roads, and lower demand for parking slots. Also means companies save money if they have to provide for lesser parking for employees.
- Lower taxes. Who do you suppose pays for the need for more roads and pollution? You the tax-payer, who else? An indirect benefit to reducing use of personal cars, but significant nevertheless. Even if taxes are not lowered, the money can be well spent on other community and social services.
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