Students have proposed the use of Zimride, a new ride share system, to reduce the number of vehicles on campus and serve as an alternate means of transportation. According to its website, the California-based initiative is designed “to create social, sustainable and convenient transportation.”
Unique to Zimride is its integration with social networks, such as Facebook, to find and coordinate rides among other users within the surrounding area. After choosing a time and destination, a user can directly view the Facebook profile of the driver or rider from the website interface. This feature is intended to create trust among users in a way that ride share boards and posts were unable to do in the past.
Coordinator for Community Based Environmental Studies and member of the Environmental Council Diane Munroe is working on installing the program at Middlebury.
Munroe sees its integration with Facebook as key to its success.
“This is an obstacle in other ride shares systems because you don’t know who is offering a ride,” she said.
The Environmental Council proposed the partnership with Zimride to the SGA last month. In addition to the $2,500 from an environmental grant, the council is asking for additional funding. The program will cost $17,000 to $19,000 in total.
Transportation director for the SGA Matt George ’12 believes that because the program has good merit, the SGA will be willing to fund a significant portion.
While the program is aimed at involving students, faculty and staff, it remains unclear who will primarily utilize the service.
“Since we’re paid for by student activity fees,” George said, “student government has to make sure that we’re not subsidizing a service that’s used in a large part by faculty and staff.”
Students would be in support of a new rideshare program on campus.
“Given that students [at Middlebury] come from all over the country and the world, an interactive ride board would be great,” said Margaret Clark ’11. “I hate having to beg for rides.”
Transportation initiatives have had a wide range of success at Middlebury. Break bus services have drawn 150 to 400 students each break. Other services, such as the ride board, have been less successful, which George credits to lack of awareness. With the installation of Zimride, awareness will be generated through the connection with Facebook and transportation can be provided to those students, faculty and staff who fall between the gaps.
“We think that most of the students who don’t have cars who need rides are using the [break] buses,” said George. “Our buses don’t go to Washington D.C., so if students want to go some place like that, they could use this ride service.”
Besides providing more transportation options, this system was chosen by the Environmental Council for its focus on CO2 reduction. Zimride boasts high success rates on other campuses including 20 percent participation rates and schools with the service have demonstrated an average annualized reduction of 500,000 pounds of carbon emissions.
Director of Sustainability Integration Jack Byrne says the high rates of use in other areas was a selling point, as the council was looking for ways to reduce the number of vehicles on campus.
“The motivation behind it is to try to increase the efficiency of vehicle use and to have some impact on the reduction in the number of vehicles that students bring to campus.”
Zimride has not yet moved to smaller liberal arts colleges. Because of the high cost, the Environmental Council may propose signing a partnership with another campus, like Colby or Bowdoin. This could potentially cut the cost in half and bring another college into the service to give Zimride more data on how to make ride share better in a rural setting.
“Middlebury represents something somewhat unique for them,” said Byrne. “I think they’re looking at this as a potential site where they could learn a lot about how to make it work better for a rural based college or university.”
ZimRide Homepage
Zimride to offer green carpooling at Midd
Comments
