The concept of carpools

If you have experienced driving in the urban freeways of the U.S., especially in California, you will notice that there may be special lanes which are marked "Carpool Lanes." Many of us understand and may even practice the concept of carpools (or car-pools) to a lesser extent, oftentimes limited to our children going to the same school in the morning and the return trip after class. But carpooling (or ride-sharing or car-sharing) is not common in this country, even in Cebu or Manila in spite of the acute traffic congestion we always complain about nowadays.

Carpooling is the sharing of car trips so that more than one person travels in a car. We see this when some families living in the same neighborhood decide to send their children to school using one car when they go to the same school. In the US, carpool commuting is very popular for people who live in the same household or neighborhood and who have jobs near each other, too - they save on fuel or commuting costs. There might be certain drawbacks when schedules do not match, but in general, this is a common practice in the West.

But the more important thing to realize, especially for governments/ transport/ traffic agencies, is that carpooling is an important and valuable tool in planning for transport mobility and traffic management. Note that I cited both and this is because, while these are invariably inter-related, they don't mean exactly the same thing and needs to be addressed separately. We can study both at the same time, but their technical analyses are not interchangeable, the factors affecting both are remarkably different from each other more than what one might think.

Carpooling holds such importance in transport and mobility that separate lanes are indeed built for this mode. There is even a technical term for this - High Occupancy Vehicle lanes. People just know these as carpool lanes, marked as they are in the freeways but a quick look at the California Department of Transportation website will show the definition of such HOV lanes. Only cars with two, or sometimes 3 people on it, are allowed here, and any violation carries a $481 fine! "A child counts as an occupant, but pets, infants still in the womb, inflatable dolls or ghosts (!) do not," the website says. Sometimes, these are only made HOV lanes on certain hours, such as peaks.

There will always be reasons why Filipinos won't embrace the practice, and it's not something I would vigorously advocate today. But there will come a time that the government must take a closer look at carpooling as a transport/mobility solution. What is more important is that both the government and the people-commuters understand the concept behind it. The term HOV denotes a more efficient way of road space. Certainly a car carrying 2, 3, or even 4 people using the same road space will be more efficient. The more passengers in a vehicle, the better. This is precursor of the basic concept of mass transportation, like trains carrying 400 passengers or BRT's carrying a hundred.

Building more new roads or widening existing ones are not the only solution to the traffic congestion, and these are not even the better ones. Everybody seems to agree that mass transportation is it, but shifting to more efficient modes is only one the three major solutions, the other two being the increase of road space, and the less popular vehicular reduction programs (color coding, etc.). Voluntary curtailing of personal trips actually helps a lot, especially unnecessary ones. In fact, doubling the price of gasoline will actually decongest traffic faster than anything else, without decreasing productivity, but this is something everybody will be up in arms against. I'm just saying it will.