“Save Energy, Save Fuel - Car Pool to the Stadium!” when Anil Kumble said it to his fans, it more than spoke for the need of going green. Carpooling is an effective way of caring for one’s environment. This probably is the reason why Royal Challengers Bangalore took up the theme of carpooling in the recently concluded IPL in a big way. The group tried doing its bit helping contribute to a safer environment and also tried to involve its fans. The official website requested fans to create their profile and join a car pool and come to the stadium with other fans of RCB.
Carpooling globally has been popular and is soon catching up slowly but steadily in India as well. Carpooling is the most common ride-sharing arrangement. It usually consists of two to four persons commuting in a vehicle. Not only does it save fuel but also the environment.
If you share your ride with just one other co-worker, you can cut the cost of commuting in half. Fill the car with four friends, and you'll pay just 25% of what you had paid to drive alone. You also save on the wear and tear of your car.
In a lot of places carpooling can save you even more time and money, because pairing up allows you to skip tolls on bridges, or opens up access to less-clogged high occupancy vehicle lanes.
A 2012 study in Tehran came up very interesting facts. It pointed out how approximately 40% of fuel consumption in large cities is related to transportation. A stated preferences survey was used to observe travellers’ tendency of carpooling.
When all interested travellers, independent of knowing appropriate ride-share or not, choose carpooling then vehicle trips per day would decrease about 780,000 vehicle trips per day and reduce annual fuel consumption by 336.53 million litre. The results show that if appropriate strategies like carpooling websites are designed to help travellers for identifying appropriate ride-shares, carpooling would increase by 30% and this increase will reduce annual fuel consumption by about 240 million litres.
The story is no different in India. ‘Carpooling: A Step To Reduce Congestion (A Case Study of Delhi’) by Kum Kum Dewan and Israr Ahmad threw up some interesting data. Without carpooling, the amount required for 968,316 kilolitre petrol for 1.3 mn cars is Rs 4,213 crore per annum. By carpooling, this amount reduces to Rs 2902 crore. Thus, a revenue of Rs 1310.98 crores can be saved by saving 301,307 kilolitre petrol by carpooling in Delhi.
Considering the fact that the study was done way back in 2007, the numbers must have obviously spiralled up. So go on make a carpool to ride to work.
