When Pace launches its van pool service this fall, it hopes it doesn`t repeat mistakes that caused the Chicago Area Transportation Study to cancel a similar program in spring.
The Pace board last week gave staff the green light to sign a three-year, $1.6 million contract with United States Fleet Leasing Inc. Pace vans could hit the road as early as Sept. 1, according to officials.
”We`re very excited about this,” said board Chairman Florence Boone, who says she thinks the program could build on Pace`s successful subscription bus service that operates outside of fixed routes. But, she added, ”we`re not going to do it the way the CATS van pooling was tried. We`re going to start small,” maybe only 10 vans to start.
In a van pool, people who work at the same job site and live near one another can commute together with one person designated as the driver. Pace will lease the vans, but drivers will ride free and have limited personal use of the vehicle.
When it went to the Regional Transportation Authority for funding, CATS had projected it would have 270 van pools operating by January 1992. When it canceled the experiment after 30 months, only 10 van pools were operating.
That experience could make the RTA skeptical when the Pace staff gives its presentation on its van pool proposal in an RTA committee meeting later this month. A spokesman said some RTA board members, but not all of them, are cool to the idea given CATS` experience.
Pace doesn`t need RTA funding to start the program. This fall it will take the $36,000 estimated startup costs out of Pace`s consulting budget.
But next year, it will need RTA approval to include van pooling as part of its 1992 budget, even though the funding would come out of Pace`s budget surplus, according to Terrance Brannon, planning and development director at Pace.
Gerald Rawling, who directed the CATS van pooling program, said he is trying to figure out what went wrong with the program. He said he does know that CATS` 15-passenger vans were hard to fill, drivers were hard to find and fares, sometimes as high as $85 per person per month, were sometimes prohibitive.
”I understand Pace is looking at the 7- to 11-passenger van,” Rawling said. ”Let`s hope that`s going to make a difference. It`s tough to find 15 people who are all on the same schedule, going to the same place and living near each other.”
Commuters have rejected van pooling because they crave the freedom and mobility of getting to work by car and van pools lock commuters into a fixed time and route.
But proponents are adamant that public attitudes will have to change as times change.
Clarke Schneider, director of project programming at CATS, has been making the rounds to explain to local governments how the new federal Clean Air Act will change lives over the next few years.
For example, by 1996 employers with a work force of more than 100 will have to reduce the number of people driving to work alone by 25 percent.
How the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will enforce that is a mystery, Schneider said. But it is likely to be solved by one or more of the 180 rules and regulations that the EPA is expected to promulgate over the next two years to fulfill requirements of the 800-page act, Schneider said.
Van pooling, in theory at least, ”is going to be very important,”
Schneider said, and employers will have to be at the forefront of finding ways to make it work. ”They`ll have to provide incentives,” he said.
Said Boone: ”Given the congestion, given the Clean Air Act, given the frustration of drivers, anything that cuts down on the number of vehicles on the road is important. We`re going to start small and see if we can help the problem at all.”
