Vanpooling picks up speed for Gwinnett commuters
Instead of gripping the steering wheel in frustration as traffic slugs along I-85 every morning, Amy Edwards has found a new routine. The Dacula resident and Home Depot employee uses a vanpool to get to work each morning in Atlanta.
"Besides the obvious environmental benefits, for me it was the money," she says of her reasons for joining other workers in sharing a van ride downtown. "With gas prices the way they are, I'm saving about $400 a month in gas money and the cost of car repairs. Plus it really takes a lot of stress out of my day. So I get to sit back, balance the checkbook, read a book, take a nap."
In Gwinnett and across the Atlanta region, vanpooling is attracting more and more workers looking to save money and time on their daily commutes. Riders pay a monthly fee (some employers pay for all or part of the costs) to join a group of seven to 15 passengers who share a van that picks them up and drops them off every day.
Commuter Club, a region-wide organization sponsored by the Cumberland Community Improvement District, operates 14 different vanpools each day from Gwinnett County, more than any other county in the Atlanta region.
According to Ginny Rainey, executive director of Commuter Club, her organization's job is to efficiently match riders with vans.
"We match commuters from the same area with a local group," she says. "The group itself comes up with the route and the feasible stops. There are generally two to three stops at the home end and two to three stops at the work end, so it's very efficient system."
Each vanpool has a primary driver who does the driving and keeps the van at his or her home. Each van also has a few alternative drivers who take over when the primary driver is sick or on vacation. The club's fees pay for gas and all maintenance costs.
Rainey says companies encourage vanpooling because it cuts down on a lot of the pre-work stress that decreases employee productivity.
"The benefit to employers is that it really addresses morale issues," she says. "Employees are now arriving at work rested and relaxed and don't need the typical water cooler time to relieve stress each morning. Plus it really does help with absenteeism and tardiness because they're able to reliably get to work on time."
Edwards, who works in merchandising at Home Depot, says she joined her vanpool a year and a half ago after she decided the stress of navigating I-85 traffic every morning was straining her quality of life.
She joined a van used by other Home Depot employees and has noticed a plethora of advantages, especially the amount of time saved each by using the HOV lanes.
"Another benefit to me has been in networking," Edwards says. "A lot of people at my company ride the vanpool, so I've met a lot of people in other lines of business that I wouldn't have ordinarily met."
Because driving back and forth to work represents a large portion of an average commuter's driving costs, mass transit or vanpooling can also save employees' money. According to AAA, the average cost per mile (including total operating and ownership expenses) of operating a vehicle is 49 cents per mile.
The Commuter Club vanpools average about $50 per person per month, depending on the length of commute. Rainey says the costs of maintaining the vans are partially subsidized by state and federal grant programs.
For more information about vanpooling, call 770-859-2331 or visit www.commuterclub.com.
