about flexible carpooling

costs

Click on the headings below to read more about flexible carpooling.

• overview
• order of arrival carpooling
• membership
• safety
• special parking design
• deciding who drives
• ride credit system
• technology
• kiss & ride, cycle, walk
• coffee
• routes
• pick up & drop off points
• guaranteed ride home
• cost
• website
• q&a

First lets say that the final decision on any and all charges will be made in discussion with the transportation authorities, so what is here is not certain. There are several ways you could be charged to use flexible carpooling, and at the same time those costs could be offset by the transportation authorities. Afterall, as you will see below, the system can save them lots of money.

Member Costs: Lets look at the different costs in the order you are likely to encounter them.

Application Fees

You could be charged a fee to apply for membership. This might be to ensure people applying are 'real', but it could also be set at a level to offset the cost of processing applications. It will cost someone about $25 each to process the applications. The fee you get charged could range from zero to $25.

Membership Fees

You could be charged an annual membership fee. This would be charged so that the fixed costs of providing the flexible carpooling system each year are covered regardless of how much the system is used. The amount of fixed cost, divided by the number of members, will be lower if there are lots of members. Most of the costs of the system are 'fixed costs', incurred whether people use the system or not. This charge also can be used to ensure that people who use the system infrequently are paying a fair share of its overheads. The overheads do cost money, say about $150 per member per year. The fee you get charged could range from zero to $150 per year.

Technology

The car-tags and membership cards that enable flexible carpooling cost about $300 per set. Someone will have to pay for this. It could be funded as a capital cost of the project, or some or all of it could be charged to the members. Alternatively an annual 'rental' could be charged to the members. The annual rental would probably need to be in the order of $50. Another alternative would be to charge members a bond that would be returned when the equipment is returned. So the charge for the technology could range from zero to $300 as a one-off, and or an annual charge between zero and $50. It is likely that you would have to pay the full cost for any technology that gets lost.

Ride Credits

The first five ride credits for each direction on your route will be issued when you become a member. This will create a 'float' in the system. Each time you use the system your ride credit account increases or decreases. If you both take and provide rides you might never have to pay for a ride credit. If you always provide rides you will accumulate them and will be able to sell them for cash. If you always take rides you will need to buy ride credits. These are expected to cost about the same as a bus ticket for a similar journey, though the exact price will be set by the market. Payment for ride credits will be made through your flexible carpooling financial account, so if you are buying lots of ride credits you will need to put money into this account.

Service Fees

Each time you use the flexible carpooling system the operator could charge you a service fee. This would be deducted from your flexible carpooling financial account. This fee would be used to recover the costs of providing the system, less any annual membership fees that have been used for the same purpose. It will cost the operator something in the order of $1.00 per system usage (not including the cost of the parking), on average, to operate the system, so this is the amount you could be charged. On the other hand this could be offset by incentives, see below, or waived altogether.

Incentives

From time to time transportation authorities pay incentives to get people to take alternative forms of transport. It is possible that with the implementation of flexible carpooling the authorities will see this as an ideal way to manage this spend. Similarly, many employers pay a pre-tax benefit to help employees fund the cost of alternatives to single occupant driving. The funds from these sources will be able to be put into the flexible carpooling finanancial account of each member. In fact, the records of usage of the system could be used to claim such incentives.

Parking

You could be charged a fee for parking at the flexible carpooling park, to help recover the cost of providing this facility. This would most likely be the case if the system was provided by a commercial provider. However, in order to reduce the level of traffic and save the costs of additional roading and public transport services, it is possible that the transportation authorities would want to provide the parking at minimal charge. The cost of parking outside of down-town areas is often in the order of $5 per day. You might be charged between zero and $5.00 per day for parking.

Roading Authority Costs and Savings

Infrastructure

Flexible carpooling reduces the number of vehicles using the roading system. If it is adopted in sufficient quantities it could make a real difference to the need for additional roading system infrastructure spend. It could reverse the pattern of traffic growth. These savings will be offset to some extent by the cost of building flexible carpooling parks, and paying the operating costs of the flexible carpooling system. It is estimated that the cost of providing flexible carpooling is about 25% as much as the cost of building new infrastructure to get the same impact on capacity.

Passenger Transport

Flexible carpooling can be used to complement the bus or train system. It is best when it serves communities that are not already well served for public transport. It is a lot less costly to implement flexible carpooling than it is to add a new regular bus service. If the new route would be an extension on the existing transit system, the flexible carpooling route would operate with the transit service parking area as its destination. It is estimated that the cost of providing flexible carpooling is about 50% as much as the cost of implementing new bus services on a similar route.

Park and Ride

Many transport authorities fund a combination of infrastructure and passenger transport by buying or renting parking facilities for park and ride. These facilities are often provided at no cost to the users, and the passenger transport is similarly subsidised. Often the farebox barely covers operating costs, and capital costs are not recovered. Comparing the impact of park and ride, with the impact of flexible carpooling, it is estimated that the payback period (how long it takes to save the amount that the project cost) for the whole community (taking citizens and transport authorities together) of building parking for park and ride is about 20 years, while on a similar basis for facilities for flexible carpooling it is about 2 years. The reason is that the saved costs (reduce vehicle running and parking costs) stay in the community rather than being used to fund the capital and operating costs of buses.

Land Availability

A key issue to deal with, whether creating bus park and ride, or flexible carpooling parks, is the availability of land. Given that in some jurisdictions the transportation system already uses as much as half of the land, many people are reluctant to dedicate yet more land to parking cars. There are two alternatives that will limit the amount of land flexible carpooling will absorb. The first is to use existing parking facilities that are underused during the day, such as fair grounds, stadia, churches, or even shopping centres. The second is to use the airspace over the existing roads, rather than alienating more land. There is little question that in order to relieve congestion there will have to be greater provision of parking outside the major employment destinations, whether for flexible carpooling or traditional transit solutions.