Casual car pools a fix for traffic chaos:
The system works well in San Francisco, so why not try it here?

Alexandra Samuel
May 1, 2002

It's 8:13 a.m., and Jim has just awakened in his Coquitlam townhouse. He forgot to set his alarm the night before, and he has a crucial 9 a.m. meeting at his downtown office. He knows that at this hour, he has the choice between sitting in traffic or waiting 15 minutes for a bus --neither of which will get him to the office in time. He phones to cancel his meeting, knowing that this also means losing a client. Jim's morning crisis is the stuff of life in a city with a public transit system as limited as Vancouver's. Battling over the family car, riding a bike through heavy rain, making three bus connections to get just a few kilometres across town -- these are the daily inconveniences we suffer because our transit system has failed to grow as quickly as our suburban sprawl.

And that's just when the system is working. None of us will soon forget the hassles that everyone in this city endured during last year's lingering transit lock-out.

The good news is that a few adjustments can create a market for transit alternatives.

One change is suggested by a flourishing phenomenon in San Francisco: "casual carpools." It's a largely informal system that lets drivers pick up passengers at a few designated locations in Berkeley and Oakland, to take them across the Bay Bridge into downtown San Francisco.

Would-be passengers form a line at each location, and each car picks up two passengers at a time. All passengers are dropped at one location downtown. Best of all, the ride is free.

Why do commuters take on free passengers? There are incentives at work.

First, any car containing three or more people can use the high-occupancy vehicle lane on the Bay Bridge, dramatically reducing the time to get downtown. Depending on the distance you're commuting, the HOV lane can shave 20 to 45 minutes off your commute.

Second, any car with three or more people is exempted from the Bay Bridge toll. Since the toll to get downtown is $2.50 US, drivers save serious money by picking up their "free" passengers. And the time saved by avoiding the toll plaza is a big part of the system's time savings.

For many carless commuters, a casual carpool location is closer than the nearest subway or bus stop. It's cheaper than taking public transit. And it's definitely cheaper than buying a car.

This incentive structure was enough to give rise to the first casual carpools, 20 years ago. These days, more than 5,000 people use casual carpools to get into San Francisco each day.

The key to the system's success is its spontaneity. The system is spontaneous in the big-picture sense, in that it was self-organizing. No government intervention was needed to establish the carpool system, once incentives were in place.

We could have the same system in Vancouver, if we made it worthwhile for drivers to take on the extra load.

We should bump the passenger requirement for all high-occupancy vehicle lanes up to three people per car.

And we need to get over our collective prejudice against toll roads. Tolls ensure the costs of highway maintenance are borne by the people who use highways: drivers.