Get creative to promote carpools

January 27, 2025
Four commuters carpooling together.

Your company wants more employees to carpool. You’ve already educated them on the cost savings of sharing a ride and the clean air benefits. What else can you do to promote carpooling among your employees?

Go the extra mile and use your employee data to help interested parties find rideshare partners.

“It is common, especially in larger companies, for otherwise willing rideshare partners living in the same area to be unaware of available opportunities,” noted an article on rideamigos.com, a website promoting ridesharing programs. “Programs that actively aim to match prospective rideshare participants together stand a much better chance of success.”

Although it might take a little time at first, setting up an in-house program to match riders should not be too difficult. Post a sign-up sheet in a public place, perhaps with a map, to show who lives near each other and let employees explore who is interested. If there are privacy concerns, designate someone, possibly in HR, to collect info and alert people to interested parties in their geographic areas

“Carpooling with others offers a refreshing socialized alternative, and if it’s done with trusted co-workers, it is an even better way to harbor a healthy work environment, facilitating bonding, garnering new friendships and connections,” wrote Kaela van der Vaar for the carbongames.com.

Another way to try and match carpool participants is to host an event. Invite interested employees to meet and see who lives close to others. This would also allow them to gauge whether a potential carpool partner might be a good fit.

If participants are limited within an organization, PAG’s SunRideshare.com website can help people find potential carpool partners.

Most companies do not have large budgets to promote travel reduction efforts, but a little creativity can go a long way. Offer preferred parking to carpoolers. Designate spots closer to the building, or closer to parking lot exits, for those who rideshare. This is not only an incentive to those in the carpool, but the special spots become an advertisement for the program.

“Other employees will see these vehicles prominently positioned in parking lots, understand the rideshare benefit, and become aware of the company’s carpooling program if they are not already,” said rideamigos.com.

Making carpooling a competition can also inspire people. If you have a small budget for incentives, you may not be able to reward everyone, but you can reward the top performing “teams.” Offer prizes to the teams that log the most commutes or the greatest number of rideshare miles traveled. One word of caution, many times people will carpool to be a part of the competition, but return to solo driving when it is over, so find ways to keep the competitions fresh.

For more strategies on promoting the Travel Reduction Program, visit PAG’s TC Toolkit.