Kāpiti Coasters have been big users of the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s carpooling programme, Let’s Carpool, which has just won a national award and has received a very positive independent evaluation.
The NZ Traffic Institute, at its annual conference dinner this week, presented Greater Wellington with a Trafinz Achievement Award for Let’s Carpool. The award is for outstanding performance and contribution towards sustainability in transport for New Zealand.
Kāpiti has 252 registered for the Carpool scheme and the numbers using the programme are growing steadily.
Jane Davis, of Greater Wellington, says the award is fantastic recognition of the programme. “The judges commended Let’s Carpool especially for its leadership and innovation. We’re thrilled to receive this given the programme is still relatively new, and we certainly have high hopes for it, particularly in terms of extending it to other parts of the country.”
Let’s Carpool was set up in May 2009 and now almost 1400 people have registered with the programme.
The programme was set up to make it easier for people to carpool to and from work, particularly for those who don’t live or work near public transport routes. People register on letscarpool.govt.nz by giving basic details about where their commute starts and ends, and a few of their carpooling preferences, e.g. whether they prefer to drive or carpool with people of the same gender. The secure software then finds possible carpool matches for you.
Let’s Carpool has prizes available for those people who are registered and have a great carpooling story to tell. “It could be a quirky story about your fellow carpoolers or about how Let’s Carpool has changed your commuting experience. Whatever it is, we’d love to hear about it,” says Ms Davis. Prizes include vouchers from Reading Cinemas, Pak’n’Save and New World.
You can read more about Greater Wellington’s sustainable transport activities at www.gw.govt.nz/your-travel-choices
