Interviews and Experts « Van Pools Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Interviews and Experts’

Transportation & Technology Advances Benefit Commuters

July 29th, 2008 0 Comments

With gas on a constant rise, it has put many workers in a bind with long commutes to work. Many have turned to carpooling/vanpooling or technology. Commuters are now able to be just as productive from home as they would be from work due to constant technological advances.

These new means for commuters have greatly helped many workers trying to save some of their paycheck for themselves and not the pump. Companies such as VPSI INC, Zipcar, and sites such as Goloco.com are flourishing due to the high demand of vanpooling services. Commuters have reported cost savings of $150-$200 a month, and now the government is even helping commuters save on gas. Through the Internal Revenue Service’s Tax-Free Qualified Transportation Fringe Benefits, commuters are now eligible to receive as much as $115 per month in non-taxable benefits for commuting to work or for vanpool services. Another bonus with the fringe benefit program is that it can provide up to $220 a month for commuters to deal with parking fees. Employees can be eligible for both of these, which equals up to $335 a month for commuting/parking costs.

As if these commuting services weren’t enough, companies are now providing the option of a four-day workweek due to the rise of gas. Near the end of June, Oakland County, Michigan approved the four day work week. County Executive L. Brooks Patterson proposed the idea in May as a way for employees to cut their commuting costs by 20%. With this, employees work four days a week for ten hours rather than the traditional five days a week for eight hours.

Technology in the computer field has clearly made telecommuting more efficient, but lately the advances made with cell phones and PDA’s have made things even more convenient. A lot of workers who need e-mail and information on the go have turned to devices such as the Blackberry, Treo, iPhone, etc. Most of these cell phones/ PDA’s come email ready with accounts from their service provider. Whereas others can simply use the Internet and check it off sites such as google, yahoo, etc. Perhaps the most technological advanced phone, the APPLE iPhone 3G, has 3G speed and can give employees the feeling of having everything they need for work in their pocket. It also includes Microsoft exchange, which allows one to integrate their phone into the enterprise in which they work. This allows IT professionals to flawlessly integrate iPhone into their corporate environments. Due to its support with Microsoft word, Excel, and PowerPoint, PDF, JPEG, and iWork attachments can be viewed how they would on a computer.

These new means of technology and transportation is helping businesses and companies all over the U.S. maintain their workers. As gas prices continue to rise, alternative methods will continue to develop so workers won’t feel pain at the pump.

Tags: Commuting, Interviews and Experts, Sustainable Transportation, Transportation Cost Savings, Vanpool
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$99 Section 132 Commuter Benefit Plan Document

July 8th, 2008 0 Comments

Internal Revenue Code Section 132 and Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) allows employers to offer employees the opportunity to set aside a portion of their salary to pay for certain transportation expenses. The employee will not be taxed on certain commuting options

Tags: Commuting, Green Employee Benefits, Interviews and Experts, Sustainable Transportation, Transportation Cost Savings
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Interview with Robin Chase

June 17th, 2008 0 Comments

When given the opportunity to speak with Robin Chase about her thoughts on sustainable transportation and the idea behind the Zipcar, here is what we asked her!

1.Where did you get the idea for Zip car? What inspired you to start the company?

My co-founder is German. While she was sitting in a cafe, on holiday in Berlin, she saw a shared car across the street. When she came back home, she met with me and asked me what I thought about bringing the idea to Cambridge. The light bulb when off in my head. This was exactly what the internet and wireless data transmission was made for — making it simple and easier to rent a car by the hour. I also believed that there was a significant market for these services — I personally wanted access to car part-time, without the hassle and costs of owning one full-time.

2. What is the vision in the next 5 years for our environment and the way we commute?

The full costs of car ownership are already significant; the average American household spends 18% of its budget on cars. Over the next 5 years, these costs are definitely going to increase: rising fossil fuel prices, increasing use of road tolling to finance our transportation infrastructure, higher parking costs, congestion pricing, and hopefully carbon taxes. What is 18% will increase to 25% if we continue to depend on our cars to meet all our travel needs. Americans can’t support that so they will be making some changes. Among them will be our commuting patterns. A lot more people will turn to transit, biking, and walking — when those are viable alternatives — but more of them will be turning to ridesharing, carpooling, vanpooling to reduce their costs. Telecommuting, perhaps even once a day, will be increasingly common as well.

3. What ways do you think we can encourage younger commuters to turn to alternative methods of transportation?

As cars become more expensive, we need make sure that the other alternatives easier, cheaper, faster, safer, and more flexible. Who doesn’t want to be safer, save money, and save time? The road space we allocate to pedestrians, bikes, and transit need to support safe, rapid travel rather than being unsafe and congested. We need to make sure that the connections between modes are easy, accessible, and convenient. We need to make the cost of these many alternatives all add up to being cheaper than driving. As an aside, I think we’ll see more wireless connectivity on transit as well, so that you more interesting things with your commute time than driving.

4. What is the concept behind goloco.org? How did you come up with the name?

For the economic reasons I’ve outlined above, there is a rising need to share travel costs. We also have great new technical tools to make us:

1) feel safer (social networks let us travel with friends, colleagues, and groups we are comfortable with);

2) know who and when trips are available (through email alerts to your preferred destinations or when your friends or groups post trips) and nice mapping; and

3) online payment mechanisms so you don’t have awkward or inadequate sharing of travel costs.GoLoco, free spirited and independent with your friends.GoLoco from location to location with local locomotion.Go low cost and low CO2, as a way of life. GoLoco!

5. How do you think we can change the minds of a society built on status symbols such as expensive cars to find the benefits and convenience of ride sharing and not owning their own vehicle?

People do things that are in their own best interests. Commuting alone in your car is neither the smart choice financially, nor the socially acceptable choice environmentally. Your friends, your children, and your community will be making this obvious to you.

6. Do you believe that new media is the best way to reach young commuters?

It is certainly a good way since people spend a bulk of their leisure time online.

7. What concerns do you believe that people have regarding transportation in general?

Everyone is worried about the cost, and about the environmental impact. We’re worried about what our future choices are going to look like, and will these be better or worse than what we have today.

Tags: goloco.org, Interviews and Experts, Robin Chase, Sustainable Transportation, zipcar
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New Mobility Means Business! Ford Initiative, Robin Chase

June 16th, 2008 0 Comments

Robin Chase at SMART Conference: On Wednesday June 11, 2008 the University of Michigan hosted a panel on emerging markets in sustainable urban transportation. The group included speakers and panelist such as; Bill Ford, Jr., Niei Golightly (Shell), Val Stoyanov (Cisco Systems) and Robin Chase (Founder and Former CEO of Zipcar, and CEO of Goloco). The panelists were asked the question, “How does New Mobility/sustainable transportation mean business for you, and how do you envision the future of New Mobility industry globally?”

Bill Ford, Jr. opened the program by announcing that Ford will launch a new initiative called the Ford Urban Mobility Network in the fall, with the pilot city being Hong Kong. Ford has also just announced a new top environmental safety officer, Sue Cischke.

Sue Cischke explained the Ford Urban Mobility Network to be an integrated network that facilitates, “door to door commuting using cars, buses, trains, vans and various other forms of transportation with the backbone being information technology.” For example, you would use your cell phone to pick a Ford network hub and your choice of transportation, then your cell phone will tell you where the next hub would be located, costs, timing and your arrival time to your destination. In the meantime, you may take 3 or 4 different means of transportation.

After much research by Ford Motor Company Sue explained, “Commuters in places such as India are spending 5 hours sitting in traffic and with 6.7 billion people in the world, that is a waste of our valuable resources. There will be 9 billion people by mid-century and if we continue to use all of our resources we will continue to suffer.”

Niei Golightly from Shell International Petroleum Company explained that energy demand is surging and supply is struggling to keep up. I am sure we are all aware of this issue considering our rising gas prices! Shell’s approach is to look into more unconventional fossil fuels and alternative energy. So, what does this mean for Shell? It means that Shell will be in the front of improving local air quality, tacking CO2 emissions and improving efficiency. Yes, this means using less of the Shell product, but it also means that Shell will be “doing less bad.” The main question that was asked by Niei was, Is our culture ready to make sacrifices to shrink our carbon footprint and is there really such thing as a sustainable future?”

Information Technology is clearly the backbone to achieving sustainable transportation. Van Stoyanov with Cisco systems spoke about internet trends in transportation. A few examples and suggestions that he brought up were the Connected Bus that is already running in San Francisco, CA. He believes this type of bus, “ is our future” the Connected Bus is a hybrid bus that is 95% emissions free with free internet access that allows travelers to be productive on the ride to work. In addition, the bus also has a touch screen that shows commuters their bus locations, wait times, connection times, and future routes. This bus saves 55 car trips per year and if we start replicating we can offset millions of car trips. The other idea that Van mentioned was Dashexpress, a real time GPS that shows traffic and working smart hubs. If you get stuck in traffic, you can pull over in a comfortable environment and work.

Robin Chase believes that, “We are living in a world of scarcity and abundance at the same time, but we are also living in an aging, infrastructure that is pitiful.” Robin also believes that we need to make a global effort to create our own personal public transportation network. Turning your social networks into travel networks. See her website, GoLoco.org. Robin suggested that if we start living in a world where you only pay for what you use and share costs and excess capacity it opens up a shared platform for others to engage and invest in.

Robin is the founder and former CEO for the ZipCar, which allows for users to choose from a wide variety of cars by logging on to the site and picking your car up in different locations and dropping it back off when you are finished, all from your computer and a zipcard. Robin stated that, “ I believe that ridesharing is the only way out of this mess and we need to address the horrifying scarcity by sharing to reduce global warming before we are all toast.” She noted examples such as; Ebay and Dash to showcase how we share our used goods. The next step is to apply these concepts to transportation.

Tags: Bill Ford, goloco.org, Interviews and Experts, Jr, Niei Golightly, Robin Chase, Val Stoyanov, zipcar
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