Cool Planet

Anne Stephenson

By Anne Stephenson,
Campus Outreach and Climate Fellows Coordinator
Clean Air-Cool Planet

One of the greatest carbon management struggles we all share is reducing single occupancy vehicles – a challenge shared by institutions and individuals alike.  Surely all of us could be better at asking our friends, neighbors, and coworkers about carpooling opportunities.  And how often are we remembering to inflate our car tires to achieve better fuel efficiencies?  (By the way, a great list of fuel efficiency opportunities is available on the Carbon Challenge website). But isn’t the burden also shared by our employers, or our towns?  Are they helping us reduce our vehicle miles by telling us about vanpool opportunities or creating Park-and-Ride facilities?

Like other environmental challenges, there’s no silver bullet that solves this one — but we have an upcoming webinar (https://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/Webinar_Registration/registration.php) that describes three great solutions.  Used together, they can answer some of the greatest challenges in single occupancy vehicle use. The solutions discussed will be applicable to commuter populations of varied shapes and sizes (for those tuning in on behalf of an organization).  What’s more, many solutions will be useful for the cost-conscious and environmentally-minded car owner hoping to rack up fewer car miles!

Susan Sloan-Rossiter will address recent successes in Transportation Demand Management.  Ms. Sloan-Rossiter is Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc.’s (http://vhb.com/) leading expert on TDM; an innovative approach to transportation infrastructure of use to campuses, companies, and municipalities alike (VHB provides integrated transportation, land development, and environmental services to public, private and institutional clients).  And we’ll learn how to get better data about car miles with an alternative to the typical commuter survey.  Mike Scott, cofounder of Moblu Inc. (http://www.moblu.ca/welcome), will talk about how his organization’s free web-based resources for drivers can help individuals track their mpg efficiency while also populating a more accurate organizational commuting profile.  And last but not least, Brent Drewry from PickUp Pal (http://www.pickuppal.com/pup/intro.html) will tell us more about building carpooling networks through social media and events.   According to Drewry, carpooling is a habit we have to learn, and works best when networked with things we’re doing already – like checking our Facebook profiles!

As an environmentalist and frequent driver in a car that could fit four more, I’m looking forward to the webinar.  I need better personal driving habits – from Mr. Scott I’m looking forward to learning more about tracking my mileage on each tank of gas.  Am I really implementing efficiencies like coasting and driving the speed limit as much as I think I am?  And I have never once filled my tires in between trips to Jiffy Lube.  Maybe if I had an on-line account which showed me the real dollar payback from doing it, I would!  And from Mr. Drewry, how do I use Facebook to find other drivers to Portsmouth who also alternate between listening to NPR and Harry Potter on Audiobook?  There must be hundreds!  Forget internet dating, I’m in the market for one good carpooling partner!  And of course, I’m anxious to have more resources to share with our CA-CP partners looking for innovative ways to reduce their scope 3 transportation emissions.  Ms. Sloan-Rossiter’s overview of TDM strategies should help me be better versed in those solutions.   So, please join me for our webinar on March 30^th to learn more!  You can sign up at:  https://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/Webinar_Registration/registration.php.

This entry was posted on March 9, 2010 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Community Action, Energy Efficiency, Fuel Efficiency. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: car pooling, Fuel Efficiency, HOV, mpg, ride share, save gas, SOV, sustainability, transportation