The benefits of car pooling
It may sound like a thing of the past, but car pooling is a great way of saving money, meeting neighbours and colleagues, and helping the environment.
Our energy consumption
Transport accounts for 41 per cent of Australia’s energy consumption and is responsible for 14 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Within this, cars and light vehicles account for 79 per cent of transport fuel consumption and are responsible for 80 per cent of the segment’s GHG emissions.
Transport energy demand is forecast to grow at about 2.3 per cent p.a., implying an increase in demand of 50 per cent to 2020 (ABARE 2001).
Road transport is currently serviced by petroleum-based fuels. Passenger vehicles account for 65 per cent of the energy demand in this segment (35 per cent freight). Road freight, which is fuelled mainly by diesel, is forecast to grow the fastest at 2.9 per cent p.a. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vehicles accounts for 20 per cent of energy demand. There is currently limited activity with compressed natural gas (CNG), hydrogen and ethanol.
The price of ever-increasing fuel, tolls and the need for an extra vehicle makes trying to stretch your budget seem impossible.
Why not share?
Bearing all of this in mind, have you ever thought about car pooling?
It is a cost effective way of getting to work and a great way of minimising your impact on the environment.
Other benefits of car pooling:
- T2 lanes will be available to you
- Meeting colleagues and neighbours you otherwise might not have
- Your trip to and from work will be broken up by giving you someone to talk to
- The safety factor if you work late at night
There are car pooling services on the internet such as TheCarPool.com.au which will help you search for car pooling partners in your areas, help you calculate your savings and teach you about car pooling etiquette.
There are, of course, risks involved. The person you are car pooling with may have to leave earlier than usual or work back some days, leaving you to make alternative arrangements at the last-minute, you might have a falling out with one of your ever-late workmates, or maybe you’ll get trapped in a car with someone you discovered you didn’t really get along with. But car pooling has the potential to make commuting to and from work fun.
To be effective your company needs to support the idea, but you may be surprised – there are many ways they could help out. They’ll also find there are a few extra parking spaces.
Tell us about you car pooling experiences.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I have car pooled where possible for probably the last 9 years where on average I have pooled with at least two colleagues. Pooling is a good idea because it is easier to find a parking space, it is cheaper because the car is only being taken to work every third week, and its much better for the environment because there is only a fraction of the pollution. Good communication and planning between car poolers can avoid any friction.
October 24th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I car pool from Goulburn to Canberra each day, a round trip of 200 kilometres. There are 5 people in our car pool, and 4 cars, 1 is a passenger only. On average it costs about 30 dollars to drive to canberra and back. This is a significant saving, and the passenger contributes 10 dollars one way to fuel costs, wear and tear.
Its nice to doze while another drives in the morning. It’s also good to have a chat in the afternoon on the way home. We know each other well.
Working people’s commuter public transport between Goulburn and Canberra is so useless and infrequent as to be irrevelant, more like non existent.
Our state member of parliament asked us in a transport survey, how often we travel to Sydney to work, study, attend medical appointments etc. The sydney goulburn public transport is woeful enoough, but to the MP’s suprise, most people travel to Canberra to do most shopping, work, study.
I’ll be leaving the car pool soon because I have bought a house in Canberra. I dont like leaving Gouburn as it is a nice comfortable town and i had no mortgage debt, but the transport and early mornings wore me down.
Car pooling is a good way to go, good economic and environmental advantages. The only problem is that you have to leave and arrive at the same time as the other poolers. I cant work back if something important needs to be done.
Thanks
Stuart
October 24th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
My experience is a bit different. I live in a country town and chose to send my child to a small 2 teacher school 15kms out of town. Luckily so did several other families in town! We run a car pool to get the kids to and from school.
Because we all have different availabilites and different size cars we have a rather complicated roster but as we appoint one person to be the coordinator for the year and we all communicate very well there are not many problems. At the moment I take the kids Tue, Wed & Thur mornings. Other parents do the other runs, some trips we have to send two cars due to the number of kids. But it works pretty smoothly. Everyone has some flexibility so we can swap or change as necessary. We have a central drop off and pick up point (the home of one family where someone is always home) and cut off time in the morning. If children aren’t there by 8.45am the car pool leaves without them. As I am a single parent who works fulltime, the added benefit for me is that I can drop my son at the drop off point on the mornings I am not driving and the car pool drops him at after school care (which is located on the route between school and our central drop off/pick up point).
The business where I am employed is 5km out of town and employees over 500 people, many of whom travel from towns located up to an hour away and some of these do not have cars. There is a lot of car pooling between employees, however we do have a few problems with this. Often when the car owner/driver is sick the other people who travel with them have no alternative transport to work (there is NO public transport & taxis are too expensive). Hence one sick person can mean that 3 other people are absent. This is an issue for the business. We have also had instances where the driver has gone home sick during the day leaving the others stranded with no other way home. Recently we have moved to a 4-day rotating roster and the car pools provided some real challenges to the manager who had to allocate everyone to a team.
October 25th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I car pool from the Central Coast ( Gosford) to Huntingwood (Blacktown) with two work collegues most days of the week. The round trip is over 180km a day. As I have a novated lease and the others have private cars we use my car each day. It also happens to be the most economical. The others contribute $10 a day to cover petrol and tolls. One drives a 4WD and the other a 2.0l Lancer. If they drove, their petrol and tolls would be more than $20 dollars a day, so they are saving money and wear and tear on their cars. Yes my car is racking up the kilometers but it would be doing that if I was not car pooling. I am getting about $60 a week contributing to my running costs so I am better off. The big winner is the environment. By taking two cars off the road, I estimate that I am saving about 36 litres of petrol being burnt a day. It was easy finding car pool partners. I just put an ad in the staff classifeds at work. I had a number of responses. some peoples location and work hours were not compatible but I managed to find some people who’s work hours and location were compatible.
October 25th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I have been car pooling for about 4 years now, but technically I have been car sponge-ing for want of a word, I don’t contribute very often with a vehicle, the wife steals that. It all started when I moved to new area in the Sutherland Shire, I was working with a new team and one of the guys offered to give me a lift home one evening. I stated I was sick of late trains, crowds, lack of loos and poor schedules so I suggested I would prefer to pay him my money than give it to state rail directly. Even if one of us was running late or had to bail out on a day, on average it has been good company, better for both our pockets and I made a new friend.
We have now extended this to four bodies and it is still not a bad deal, even considering some traffic headaches(of course the southern suburbs don’t need a motorway), stupid and inconsiderate drivers, but miles better on my pocket and a bunch of new buddies.
November 10th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I started car pooling in 1968 with a work colleague. We took our cars on alternate days and it saved me having to purches a second car. Other employees of the company joined the car pool and we grew to five members, meaning we only took the car one day a week each. If we had businesss to do after work we either took our own car an extra day or organised with the other members and we all, or at least most of us did business on that day. Paying bills, etc.
Over time some of the members left but usually others took their place. The car pool eventually reduced to two of us again and this continued until 1996 when the other member left the company. I did not seek to car pool after this as my job hen meant I was out of the office a lot and needed to take my own car. I retired in 1998.
I found it most convenient as it saved money and meant my first wife and I only needed one car as she had our car generally four days a week. This enabled her to do the shopping and whatever needed to be done.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 am
Car pooling is the surley the best way for groups of people who work in or around the same area to get to work. I think reward schemes and tax benefits should be given o those who can prove they are genuine car poolers.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
In regards to the comment left by mark. I am a commuter from central coast - huntingwood and I want to carpool. Any chance i can contact you?
April 14th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Hi, I am trying to contact businesses/workplaces that have put in place a car pooling system for their employees. I am hoping to find out what lessons could be learned from their experience and what would help make car pooling successful (or identify any challenges!) in a work place if it were introduced for its employees. Does anyone know of any workplaces/employers that have implemented a car pooling system in their workplace?
Thanks…..
Celia
September 4th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I drive a work car with others and they eat breakfast cereal in the back and it annoys me, what should I do? I don’t want to compromise my long term friendship but its gotta stop. I’ve tried braking suddenly and swerving imaginary dogs to deter my back seat passenger to no avail.
September 20th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Hi,
we have recently launched a new free online map-based carpooling service for Australia.
Your opinion and comments are very welcome as well as enquiries regarding possible implementation of this service for other countries (or organisations/corporates).
The address is http://www.carpoolone.com.au/
Thanks
Ginni
P.S. a bit off topic, but perhaps still handy might be http://www.motorcyclefuelconsumption.com/ guide for motorcycle fuel consumption figures that are usually missing in the factory specs.