Carpooling

A co-worker of mine lives fairly close to us and we've often seen each other on the road on the way to work. She is soon going to be living even closer so we have talked about carpooling. Our hospital has a carpooling program where you can get 5 gallon per month gas vouchers. That's about $15 a month in gas. There is also a section of the parking structure, with prime parking spots, reserved for carpoolers. It's tempting.

This morning I called to look into the program and was disappointed. It appears that the program is designed more to alleviate the parking structure congestion during the week than to encourage helping the environment by carpooling. A few of the "rules" to receive the gas voucher through carpooling is that we would need to drive together 2 out of the 3 days we work. This won't be too difficult as long as we can get the scheduler to work with us.

Here are all the rules to receive the voucher:

1. Must drive together 2 out of the 3 days we work a week
2. Must start work between 6am-10am (we start at 7am)
3. The days you drive do not count if it is a weekend (we work every 3rd weekend)


This bothered me. This means that people working nights and weekends can't benefit from carpooling. Good thing I work days, but... I'm still bothered.