I

I
54 CAR POOLING
Shared approach
AB traffic congestion continues to snarl up city streets,
a variety of innovative car-pooling schemes are
convincing companies and employees across the
country of the benefits of sharing a ride
Words I Arnaud Renard
months it received over 10,000 registrations,
and now has over 16,000 active users, the
majority of which are based in Bangalore.
The next biggest areas of users are Mumbai
(292), New Delhi (268), Pune (249) and
Hyderabad (248). After registering, users
can search for prospective car poolers,
using different options such as start and
end point and commute times. The site
also has an etiquette section to educate
users about the 'rules' of car pooling.
Acommon worry about car pooling
is having to share a ride to work with
someone you don't know. To alleviate this
concern, preference-based searches. such
as women-only pools and specific age-
group pools, are available. And to ensure an
employee feels comfortable and safe when
arranging the car pool, commuteeasy.com
provides links to the social profiles of its
users on Facebook and Orkut.
In May this year, Mumbai radio station Red
FM andVolkswagen Passenger Cars teamed
up to organise a cleanliness drive called
'Think Blue'. Part of the campaign was to
launch the 93.5 Red FM Car Pool Facebook
applicanon as an online portal where
Mumbaikars could interact and find
people to commute with. Since launching in
the past few months, the group has attracted
interest and amassed 318 'likes'. It is just
one of many car-pool schemes springing
up in major cities across the country.
In November 2008, the Bangalore
radio stanon Radio One 94.3 FM led a
similar campaign called 'Let's Pool It' .The
station jomed forces with CommuteEasy
and Bangalore Traffic Police to promote
car pooling as a public service initiative.
Bangalore has overwhelming congestion
problems - the Times ofIndia reported in
2008 that the city had 32 lakh vehicles in a
60 lakh population. Compared with Mumbai,
Bangalore Traffic Police join forc.s with
Radio One 94.3 FM for a car-poolschem.
which had 18 lakh vehicles in a population
of 1.2 crore, this is an alarming figure. Aided
by promotion by the radio station - which
handed out extra benefits such as free movie
tickets and song requests for car-pool users
- the scheme proved extremely popular.
Afree-to-use commuteeasy.comwebsite
was set up to allow people interested in
car pooling to easily connect. In the first six
Corporate partnerships
The success of CommuteEasy in Bangalore
is down to the partnerships it has created.
The tie-up with Radio One took the user
base from 5,000 to 15,000 in the space of a
year, and the project is receiving ongoing
support from the Bangalore Traffic Police,
which gave the company a seal of credibility
and helped in establishing 15 advertising
hoardings across Bangalore. CommuteEasy
advertisements are also played in cinemas,
and incentives such as reserved parking and
ID card distribution to CommuteEasy users
are under development.
The scheme is a low-cost solution to
ease city congestion. It is also an effective
way for companies to reduce their carbon
footprint: corporations can adopt car pooling
by encouraging their employees to use this
environmentally friendly mode of transport.
CommuteEasy can also build specialised
internal applications for corporations,
to facilitate car pooling among their
employees. The scheme has created car-
IntertrafficWorld India I Special Issue 2011
CAR POOLING 55
The names above ""sht not be very feature 1ft beta The seer h
CommuteEasy
Is IndIa's largest
carpool network
wIth thousands of
actIve users. It uses
a unIque blend of
advanced search
technIques and
social networking
to provIde the most
relevant results


PI"'1
F
I
(!JMale e> Female e> Not Particular
Flexible .. F'lXed e
09 00
--
+/- AM minI
Flexible .. F'lXed e
08 30 PM .. +/- 15 .. min.1
I Search I
Age:
Gender:
Retumllme:
start lime
I Oelata markers I Map l<Igend: From @ To e Enroute'
start location: Gayatri(llidhyapeeth)
Destination: Stabon Road(Dea:an College)
pool programmes, which are hosted on its website,
for 10 large IT companies includingWipro,
Netapp, HP and EMC2.
The website can also cater for corporations with
multiple sites: current client HP has 20 locations
across the country in its application. The application
allows employees to link up with colleagues who
share their commute route; it also provides them
with access to times of travel, age and other details.
CommuteEasy is in the process of establishing
similar programmes for other companies, and is
also branching out to cater for schools and
residential complexes.
Although commuteeasy.com is one of India's
biggest car-pooling websites, a host of other
sites offering similar services have been set
up - carpool.in, carpooling.in, poolmycar in
and india.car-pool.com are a few of the biggest.
One of the first companies to start up a car-
pool website was indimoto.com, which provides
car pools across 130 Indian cities, with ewer
30,000 car pool listings. It contributed towards
the Mega Carpool Programme of the Delhi
Government, designed to help ease congestion
caused by the Commonwealth Games in 20I O.
It also launched the first Corporate Carpool
Programme, wlnch It claims can save 200
tonnes of CO per 100 employees.
Benefits for companies
Companies located in commercial and industrial
areas will have a broader appeal for car sharing,
because a large number of workers will be
commuting to nearby offices. In addItion to helping
reduce carbon footpnnt, benefits for businesses
using car pooling include reduced demand for
car parking slots, reduced company-funded
travel expenses to work and a broadened
social network within the organisation.
As well as promoting a good company image,
car-pool programmes attract a lot of positive
media publicity for the company. They are also
classed as an Employee Welfare Activity. which
again projects a very positive image of the
business and those who are nmning it.
So far the Indian government has shown no
intention of building high-occupancy vehicle
(HOY) lanes - which would give further incentive
for people to share a ride. Other benefits such as
differential tax incentives and cheaper parking,
which are in place in various countries across
the world, have also not been considered.
BENEFITS FOR EMPLOYEES
Car pooling can save employees money
Since the gewernment deregulated fuel
pnces inJune 20I 0, the price of a litre of
petrol has risen by around 22
0
0; in Mumbai
it now costs an average ofRs 68.33. Car
pooling can at least halve an employee's daily
commuting expenses. The CommuteEasy
web application has guidelines on fees
depending on indiVIdual circumstances
- alternative pools, being the non-driver, etc.
An Indimoto survey in 2007 found that
3lOta of commuters chose to car pool to
reduce commuting stress The survey also
cl81IIled car pooling had a poSl1lVe nnpact on
staffmorale, WIth 38ll-o choosmg to car pool to
meet like-mmded people
and make new connections.
Indimoto encourages
companies to set up an employee
car-pool programme and promote
car pooling by offenng rewards
in accordance with employees'
car pooling usage The Idea is the
company first raISes awareness
of car pooling benefits and
issues mstructions VIa emaJls
and posters about how to Jom In. Staff then
post car pool requests for other company
members or staff from nearby offices, and
these requests are recorded and rewarded
It's nice to
share
Startc sh
andmake
a ....me free city
Special Issue 2011 I IntertrafficWorld India