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Why don't we carpool?

TIM , Times Union
Published 1:00 am, Sunday, June 27, 2010
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On any weekday, you can stand by the roadside at rush hour and see it: Car after car with only a driver inside.

Like eating vegetables and exercising, carpooling may be good for us but we don't like to do it.

Sharing a ride reduces pollution, cuts down on gas and oil consumption, trims costs and can extend the life of your ride. If more people did it, carpooling would make rush hour less stressful and make it easier to park closer to work.

But Capital Region commuters overwhelmingly prefer to drive alone.

The Times Union sent interns to count the number of cars being driven during rush hour at busy intersections and how many of them were occupied by one person.

At the Rexford Bridge one recent weekday morning, 760 cars drove by between 7:30-8:30 a.m. Only 47 had any passengers other than the driver. At Osborne Road and Route 9 in Colonie, 1,167 cars passed through between 5 and 5:30 p.m. one weekday, and 1,008 were occupied by a single person. Of the 159 with more than one occupant, many seemed to be parents with young children, not co-workers.

So why won't more people carpool?

"People have all these other stops along the way they want to make," said Catherine Lawson, professor of geography and planning at the University at Albany. "We don't all want to stop at the same supermarket or work out at the same gym."

Others worry about being able to get home quickly in an emergency.

"The first thing people say to you is: 'I can't carpool because what if I have to get home or if I have to work overtime,' " said Deborah Stacey, senior transportation planner for the Capital District Transportation Committee.

Carpool advocates say those concerns can be addressed: The CDTC has a program offering free rides home to carpoolers in an emergency. (See accompanying story.)

The state has tried to encourage employees to share a ride. Discounted parking spaces are reserved for carpoolers. In some lots, like the one at Empire State Plaza, there are 50 spaces and a waiting list of 100. In others, like the East Garage roof and Water Street lots, also in Albany, carpool spaces are vacant.

Twice a month, people can skip the carpool and take an additional space, said Heather Groll, spokeswoman for the state Office of General Services.

The Times Union asked readers on its Getting There blog (http://blog.timesunion.com/gettingthere/) what it would take to get them to carpool. Many say they enjoyed their freedom and "alone time" too much to give it up, while others said they liked being able to run errands, feared strangers and didn't want to be late for work or make someone else late.

Others, however, came forward to discuss why they enjoy their carpools while saving money.

Geetha Nattanmai and her husband Vivek shared a ride to work for five years. Then Geetha's co-worker at the state Health Department, Jill Ennis, asked if she could join their carpool. So, for the past five years, the three have ridden together to work almost every day.

The women take turns driving in their own cars, and the driver gets to pick the radio station. Ennis prefers alternative rock, while Geetha goes for light rock. Vivek doesn't get a choice: He sits in the back because he works for the state Department of Environmental Conservation in a different building and gets dropped off first.

The three say their ride-sharing has saved them a lot of money.

"This car is 21/2 years old, and it has 19,000 miles on it," Ennis said. "I fill up once a month on gas."

"As a DEC employee, we are encouraged to do carpooling," Vivek said. "That's our main goal, to conserve resources."

The key, the three said, is to be conscientious. "We're very lucky," Ennis said. "We're all very punctual people."

As a child, Jose De Andres drove with his mother, father and two siblings every morning and afternoon in his native Spain. His parents were teachers in the children's school, and they all commuted together.

Now De Andres, who works for the state Health Department, drops his wife Melissa off at the state Labor Department every day. Their two children, Paula, 4, and Alvaro, 21 months, go with them from their North Greenbush home to the day care center at the Labor Department.

De Andres said he thinks the time together is important. "I have fond memories of it," he said.

He takes some teasing from colleagues for having a single car, but he says the family takes a trip every other year to Spain on the savings.

"It feels redundant and unnecessary to have separate cars with the gas and the insurance," Melissa De Andres said. And in rare times when her husband cannot make it, she said, "there are enough people who work here who live close to us that I can always get a ride."

Terry Iwaneczko worried when she started carpooling with two colleagues more than two years ago that she would miss her "alone time" in her car. Instead, she and co-workers Mary Greene and Wanda Krisanda say they enjoy the ride from the Ballston Lake area to Albany.

"We can vent, and we do, so our spouses are happy," Greene said. "I've got it all out of my system by the time I walk in the door."

One winter day, they got stuck for three hours and spent the time singing Christmas carols.

"If you're stuck in traffic, you're not just muttering to yourselves," Krisanda said.

In the past two years, Greene calculates, she's saved 16,000 miles on her odometer, which should add two years to the life of her car.

Still, there are obstacles in the Capital Region that discourage large-scale carpooling.

The lack of carpool lanes is a significant factor, UAlbany professor Lawson said. If people can bypass traffic, they are encouraged to carpool. If they're stuck waiting, they figure they might as well be in their own cars.

The area also has an abundance of free or low-price parking spaces, CDTC's Stacey said. And unlike in major metropolitan areas, traffic congestion typically doesn't last long.

At UAlbany, only 24 people have signed on to a carpooling website and the university doesn't know how many of them are actually sharing rides.

"Gas prices have a lot to do with it," said Mary Ellen Mallia, director of environmental sustainability at UAlbany. "When prices were up to $4 a gallon, there was a lot of interest."

When gas prices hit $4 a gallon, Rick Kubis and some colleagues at the state Health Department in Delmar decided to share a ride. Kubis and a co-worker live in Gansevoort. They met at a park and ride lot, then picked up two others in Clifton Park.

"The problem we ran into was busy lives," he said. "Three people had kids, two of us were going to school, two of us had part-time jobs. You never had a day when all four rode."

Stopping twice slowed the commute, he said.

"You added a half hour to your ride," he said. "If everybody wasn't ready to go at the end of the day, you had to wait. It was logistically difficult. I think fewer people would have been better."

Kubis hasn't given up on the idea of carpooling. He and his fellow Gansevoort resident have discussed making a second effort to share a ride a few days a week.

"We're talking about doing it again," he said, "but probably just the two of us."

Staff writer Tim O'Brien can be reached at 454-5092 or by e-mail at tobrien@timesunion.com. Staff interns Nathan Hopper and Sarah Child contributed to this report.

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