David Stevenson: With the internet it's time to look afresh at car pools

COMMENT

Rising oil prices, Auckland's traffic woes and the environmental problems caused by car exhausts make this the perfect time to revisit car-pooling.

It was last seriously considered in the 1970s as a reaction to the oil shock that followed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Alas, as that crisis and oil prices abated, so did our interest in car-pooling.

To immediately alleviate traffic congestion, a car-pooling scheme would embody one main concept: I will get out of my car for you today if you will get out of your car for me tomorrow (don't panic, this involves not using your car to commute only one day a fortnight).

The scheme would also be internet-based, thereby providing an ease of access and use that was unavailable in the 1970s. The website would also display participation rates in the scheme so people could be reassured they were not the only ones making the effort.

Individuals putting themselves out to participate would be the key to the success of this scheme. If everybody, including those who have a company car or a permanently paid-for carpark, did not use their car to commute on one return trip to or from work each fortnight, a 10 per cent reduction in traffic would be achieved.

This is self-evident but no city has been able to, or even attempted to, achieve this because of an enduring myth that people will not get out of their cars for the common good under any circumstances.

It is time to challenge this myth.

First, on a strictly practical level, the Middle East is so insecure that the possibility of sudden disruption to the supply of oil can never be discounted. Thus, a well-tested and functioning car-pooling website is a sensible tool for most cities to have as part of their transport infrastructure.

More importantly, many people are becoming increasingly uneasy about the effects of car exhausts on the environment. We feel powerless to do anything about it and standing at a bus stop in the rain, while everybody else is cruising by in the comfort of their cars, does not induce a warm feeling of having rescued Mother Nature.

To get over this feeling of individual powerlessness, the best approach is to be practical rather than high-minded and to ask whether making changes in how we get around could bring benefits, not just inconvenience, to our lives.

To answer this, let's look at the mechanics of an internet-based car-pooling scheme.

To deal with safety concerns initially, the car-pooling website would have one registration section for men and one for women. People under 18 would be excluded from the scheme.

Participants would register their email address under the suburb in which they live and then communicate with others who have registered so as to get car-pooling under way.

There would be a separate registration section for those who did not wish to enter the car-pooling scheme but were prepared to use public transport at least one business day a fortnight to reduce traffic congestion, oil consumption and pollution.

It would be most important that those people registered so that there was an accurate measure of the numbers of people who believed they, as individuals, should be doing something to help.

If the scheme achieved any traction at all, the benefits deriving from reduced traffic congestion would be immediate. The consequent reduction in petrol consumption and pollution would be of much greater significance because at that point the scheme would be copied by cities throughout the world. Think about it.

* David Stevenson is a Wellington lawyer.