If heightened gas prices and increased congestion aren’t enough to encourage carpooling to campus, student commuters now have the opportunity to exchange their permits for special carpool passes.
Student Government officials met with Transportation representatives last year to push for an expansion of the employee carpool program to include student commuters, leading to the creation of a student carpool program.
The program allows a minimum of two commuting students with valid deck or West Lot permits to trade in for a partial refund and a single carpool pass, which is valid in the same zones.
David Gregory, parking services manager for Transportation, said Student Government played a key role in the program’s brainstorming process.
“We already had an existing model for it, but [the SG officials] came up with some ideas that forced us to think ‘What do we need to do?’ and ‘What can we do?'” Gregory said.
Student Senate President Kelli Rogers said some of her main sources of inspiration for the initiative were peer institutions.
“I noticed that other universities had a carpool program and [N.C. State] didn’t,” Rogers said. “We looked at what worked for other universities of our size. We asked ourselves, ‘How do we encourage students to carpool?'”
As an added incentive, students receive eight scratch-off day passes for occasions when carpooling proves inconvenient. Students are also able to reverse this purchase and reacquire their traded-in permits if necessary.
Gregory said the program is flexible and practical.
“We have to be realistic, since schedules change,” Gregory said. “If a carpool does dissolve, the worst you’re going to get is [the permit] you had.”
Walid Nazari, a sophomore in biochemistry, said the carpooling plan is a good idea.
“One of the perks of carpooling is that you don’t have to drive every day,” Nazari said. “I normally ride with someone, so [the program] sounds like something I would be interested in.”
Travis High, graduate student in accounting, said he doesn’t carpool often, but he would have found such a program useful earlier in his collegiate career.
“I’ve been here a while, and each semester I would vary between getting a parking pass or going to the pay lot,” High said. “Parking passes are definitely the way to go, and I think this program is a great idea.”
Although he approves of the program, Alton Walston, a sophomore in computer engineering, said it’s not for him.
“I only live about 10 to 15 minutes away,” Walston said. “I saw the program on the [Transportation] Web site, but I ride by myself. I don’t really need it.”
Gregory said the carpooling program has benefits for students other than simply cutting permit costs.
“Students save gas money, there’s less congestion on campus and less wear and tear on vehicles,” Gregory said. “Every day that one or two [student commuters] don’t drive, it saves everybody money. All these things come together to help the University.”
Rogers said environmental responsibility is a major point of the program.
“If you drive down Dan Allen and look at the people sitting in the cars, you see one person per car,” Rogers said. “Students should be rewarded for carpooling because they’re cutting down on congestion, saving money and saving the environment.”
One drawback to the joint parking permits is the required trip to the Transportation office, as the permits will not be available online.
“The two people need to come in together, because the transaction needs to happen at the same time,” Gregory said.
Students seeking to take advantage of the carpool program can bring a friend and any combination of two parking deck or West Lot permits to the Transportation office, located in Administrative Building I on Sullivan Drive.
