You wake up to the buzzing alarm clock, bleary-eyed, you make breakfast, get dressed and hop in your car for your commute to Vancouver on a Monday morning.
What is wrong with this picture? Well, for one thing you are on your own - a single-occupant in a vehicle commuting to the city. And if Manuel Zahariev has his way, you might soon be considering changing your habits after a ride-share awareness event set to take place on Monday (April 18).
"I have been a daily commuter to full-time work in Vancouver for about 11 years," said Zahariev. "After a while, you get to know most cars that are driving on the highway at rush hour. Most of them are single occupancy vehicles. In effect, there is a community of cars driving up and down the Sea to Sky Highway. I have always thought whether it would be possible to change that to a community of people."
Zahariev, who runs a ride-share business called Skwez, is hoping the event will increase awareness about ride-share options. To be held during the afternoon rush hour in the Stawamus Chief parking lot, information about ride sharing will be provided, Zahariev and volunteers will be on hand to answer questions and there will also be a prize draw.
"Our main goal is to provide information for regular and occasional commuters about ride-sharing and about our service. We hope that awareness will lead to changing driving behaviour in our community," Zahariev said.
He explained that Skwez is easy, fast and free. "As a user, you plan your trip and the website matches you with other participants. You decide, based on the profiles of matching participants, whether and with who you want to share a ride. Skwez suggests that each rider pays to the driver the cost of gas for the trip and the system automatically calculates it for you."
Jack Bell Ride-Share is another option for Squamish residents searching for ways to share rides to work, school and events. The Jack Bell Foundation, a registered charitable B.C. society, pioneered Canada's first and largest organized public ride-sharing program in 1992. More than 100 companies and organizations representing more than 100,000 employees use the service. In addition to helping people find a ride in someone else's vehicle using the online database, Jack Bell Ride-Share also owns and operates a fleet of vehicles (vans and cars) for which people pay a monthly fee, as a driver or passenger, to use. This is ideally suited to a commuter who has a fixed work schedule from Monday to Friday.
Another initiative, the Vancouver Co-Operative Auto Network (recently re-named Modo Car Co-op), has encouraged car sharing in the pursuit of improving air quality and reducing greenhouse gas emissions since 1997. The not-for-profit car-sharing co-op offers a cost-effective and accessible alternative to owning a car, as well as the opportunity to reduce members' environmental footprint. A variety of vehicles are available to use and members enjoy free parking in any Permit Zone in Vancouver.
Modo Car Co-op is meeting the sustainable transportation needs of more than 7,000 members with vehicles at more than 200 locations in Metro Vancouver.
Doing the commute to Vancouver can be costly to the environment, Zahariev stated. "If you are driving daily from Squamish to work in Vancouver, your annual CO2 emissions are more than 7.5 tonnes. In 2007, the annual per-capita emissions level from private vehicle operation was about 2.1 tonnes."
According to the District of Squamish's 2009 Transportation Hub report, "transportation, specifically light vehicle transportation, is the biggest and fastest growing contributor to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in our district."
This concerns Zahariev, but he finds cause for hope.
"As a community, this also represents our biggest opportunity to make a difference in reducing our environmental footprint," he said. "If you are driving alone, one more passenger in your car can reduce your CO2 emissions by half. With two more passengers and an environmentally friendly vehicle, you could do better than the national average."
Keep an eye out for signs on Highway 99, pointing the way to the ride-share awareness event on April 18 at the Stawamus Chief parking lot from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. For more information on ride-share programs check out www.skwez.com and www. online.ride-share.com/en/my/ and www.modo.coop.
