The Smart Commute Association yesterday launched Carpool Zone [smartcommute.ca], the first Internet carpool service to help commuters in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton find people to share a ride with. The association is a new partnership between the cities and regions around Toronto and Hamilton and its objective is to provide and encourage commuting options such as working from home, transit and cycling. The goal is to have 10,000 users by the spring with a minimum of 5,000 car pools. This would result in 2,500 less cars on the road. Read more about it in the Toronto Star.
The Toronto Board of Trade has a big hand in this initiative — they believe congestion is costing GTA businesses $1.8 billion a year in lost productivity. They even think that number is low. For 30 years environmentalists have been preaching for people to think with their heads and depend less on their automobiles. This tactic obviously hasn’t worked effectively. Sadly, if we want cleaner air, we are going to have to speak to people’s wallets as well. I think the high gas prices are already doing some of that for us — you can see it in the number of vehicle purchases over the last few months. Small car sales are way up since the summer, while large SUV purchases are down by nearly 50 percent.