Incentives for Choosing a Clean Air Commute!

One of our programs that we haven’t presented here is our Santa Rosa Trip Reduction Incentive Program – Free Ride!

The program began fourteen years ago and continues through the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s Transportation Fund for Clean Air. The continuing objective for the program is to improve our air quality while reducing traffic and parking congestion. This is done by offering local employers a way to encourage their employees who work in Santa Rosa to get out of their single-occupancy vehicles and take a commute alternative such as walking, biking, car pooling or riding the bus to and from work a few times a week.

The incentive for bus riders is a significantly reduced monthly pass on Santa Rosa CityBus or Sonoma County Transit. The incentive for those who choose to walk, bike or carpool recently changed from a movie ticket, to entry in a monthly drawing for a $50 gift card. This change was brought about when the Rialto, whose movie tickets were purchased through the grant, lost their lease and recently closed. Previously, the movie tickets were “won” when participants used a commute option (walking, biking or carpooling) at least 16 times a month (somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 round trips each week). With the new gift card drawing incentive, participants are entered into the monthly drawing once for every 2 commute options they chose during the previous month. For example, if a person walks, bikes or carpools to work 20 times (one-way trips) during the month, they are automatically entered into the drawing 10 times! We made this change to help control the costs of the program which, like everything else during this economic downturn, has seen significant reductions in funding, and to “reward” program participants who are really trying to make a difference by increasing their chances to “win”.

To participate, an employer located within the Santa Rosa city limits designates a Free Ride program coordinator within their organization who then signs up the organization on the program’s Web site, http://www.santarosefreeride.org/. Once the organization is registered, the coordinator can sign up employees who would like to participate. Next, the individual employee visits the Web site to record their commute options on their monthly commute calendars. Bus riders purchase their reduced fare monthly passes at the Santa Rosa Transit Department, which is located at City Hall, 100 Santa Rosa Avenue – Room 6. The gift card winners are posted on the program’s Web site during the second week of the following month.

Another key feature of the program is the Guaranteed Ride Home. Participating organization program coordinators are given a taxi voucher they can issue to their registered participant who used a commute option to get to work that day and who has an emergency and needs to get back home. Of course, there are guidelines as to what an “emergency” is, but for the most part the program coordinators have been doing an excellent job respecting the purpose of this aspect of the program! We really appreciate this, it helps to keep the program fiscally stable.

Although in an ideal world, people wouldn’t need an incentive to make good commute choices to help the environment, we are very pleased with the success of our Santa Rosa Trip Reduction Incentive Program – Free Ride! The following statistics are very impressive!

Since the launch of the Web site (January 2007), the Santa Rosa Trip Reduction Incentive Program – Free Ride, has been extremely effective. Totals as of June 2010:
Organizations
255
Participating Employees
1532
Bike Commutes
199,635
Carpool Commutes
69,896
Walking Commutes
54,209
Santa Rosa CityBus Commutes
128,808
Sonoma County Transit Commutes
44,547
Total Trips Reduced
497,095
Total Miles Reduced
3,552,104