by James A. Bacon
The latest Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) initiative is reshuffling 22,000 jobs around the Washington metropolitan area. Thousands of those jobs are being relocated to seven facilities off Interstate 95, from the Mark Center in Alexandria to the Quantico Marine Corps base. The federal government is providing minimal funds to upgrade the region’s transportation infrastructure to accommodate the change in commuting patterns. What are Northern Virginians to do?
One option is to persuade more people to drive with co-workers. Given the fact that Americans have abandoned car-pooling in droves — car pools as a percentage of all commutes have declined from roughly 20% in 1980 to 10% in 2010 — that might seem a bit impractical. But so are alternatives like building new roads and rail lines with money the state of Virginia does not have.
Peggy Tadej, BRAC coordinator for the Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC), holds monthly roundtables to discuss ride sharing. One outfit to pitch the group was an Irish company, Avego, which had gotten its start in 2007 providing a ride-sharing service to the University College Cork community and had set up pilot programs in Seattle, Santa Barbara and the San Fransisco area.
Avego’s Smart Phone app matches drivers and passengers who are traveling the same routes. What makes its business model unique is that passengers pay drivers $1 per pickup plus $.20 per mile (minus a 15% transaction fee to cover Avego’s expenses), or roughly half the actual cost of providing the ride. In theory, the sum should be generous enough to induce some drivers to offer rides and cheap enough to persuade some passengers to leave their cars at home. The Avego program also couples individual ride shares with van pools and shuttles.
The idea sounded promising, so the NVRC partnered with Avego along with the Virginia Department of Transportation and the local governments in the I-95 Corridor. The program will be rolled out in September.
Tadej sees the ride-share program as critical not only to getting commuters off I-95 but to reduce the long back-ups of vehicles at the entry gates to the military bases. To nudge employees into ride sharing, the military is installing smaller parking lots. For instance, 3,000 people are moving to the Defense Health Headquarters off Route 50 — but there will be only 2,000 spaces. The message to employees: “You can be part of the solution by sharing rides.”
There are three layers the ride-sharing program. First, Avego is promoting van pools. The company estimates that 800 commuter vans are operating in Northern Virginia. The van pools provide daily service on regular routes at regular times. “We’ll have as many as we can sign up,” says Jason Conley, director of government relations.
But many employees work irregular hours. For those, Conley says, Avego provides the ride-sharing app to help drivers and passengers find one another on an as-needed basis. He’s aiming to get 500 drivers and 1,000 riders using this service daily in the I-95 corridor, cutting 120,000 Vehicle Miles Traveled over six months. The advent of HOT lane service on I-95 and the Capital Beltway, which allows cars with three or more riders to use uncongested HOT lanes for free, should be a real boon to the ride share, he says.
Finally, participants who can’t find a ride will have access to a guaranteed-ride-home program up to four times a year as well as Department of Defense shuttles that run to Metro stations and the program. “That’s your fall back,” says Conley. “We’re going to make sure you’re not stranded.”
For Avego, the beauty of the NVRC partnership is that it should spawn a critical mass of riders that will enable the service to spread across the Washington region. “People say we need to widen I-66. We can’t afford that,” Conley says. “We have to think differently about capacity. Think about all those empty seats in Single Occupancy Vehicles. Three out of four cars have one driver in them. Those empty seats could be better utilized.”
Over the past few decades, the changing nature of work from regimented hours to flexible schedules has made car pooling less practical. But Conley hopes that Avego’s business model — using real-time ride sharing and financial incentives to stimulate the creation of car pools and van pools — will reverse the trend. “We see a convergence of systems. … We’re not there yet, but that’s the future.”
Tadej with the NVRC shares the same dream. “If we can make this work on I-95,” she says, “we can take it to other places in Northern Virginia.” If it works in Northern Virginia, why not Fort Meade in Maryland? Why not Norfolk?
NVRC is looking for beta testers to participate in a trial run between June 18 and July 18. Employees with a .gov or .mil email address can sign up at www.WeGoMil.com.
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