SUUVA / CWA » Articles » WORKPLACES EMPLOY GAS-SAVING WAYS-THE DAILY PROGRESS, JUNE 28, 2008

WORKPLACES EMPLOY GAS-SAVING WAYS-THE DAILY PROGRESS, JUNE 28, 2008

Posted: Sunday June 29, 2008

Workplaces employ gas-saving ways

Andy Slack and Louise Wyatt take turns carpooling between their jobs at the Albemarle County Office Building. With gas rising above $4 a gallon, more people are using such methods as carpooling or taking public transportation to save money on gas.
Advertisement

By John Henderson jhenderson@dailyprogress.com | 978-7277
Published: June 28, 2008

As gas prices climb over $4 a gallon, commuters in the area are re-evaluating their relationship with the road, looking to carpooling, public transportation and alternate work schedules to save money on gas.

The University of Virginia, Charlottes-ville’s biggest employer, is stepping up its effort to help employees lower their costs. Earlier this month Leonard W. Sandridge, UVa’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, issued a memo to supervisors and department heads outlining several ways to do that.

Sandridge recommended flexible hours, allowing employees to avoid peak-hour traffic and coordinate carpools, four-day work
schedules to eliminate a day’s worth of commuting, and telecommuting for employees who can work from their homes.

Sandridge also mentioned some existing programs that would help lower costs, including free city and university bus transit for all employees and “occasional” parking passes for part-time commuters. UVa set up the free bus service for its employees last year. Beginning Aug. 1, the university will offer discounted parking for carpoolers.

“We believe it’s important for us to do everything we can to be environmentally sensitive and to do everything we can to control the costs of our employees,” Sandridge said.

Whether or not employees take advantage of these options depends on where they live and the nature of their work.

Most Charlottesville residents, as well as many in the urban ring of Albemarle, have access to the Charlottesville Transit Service, including the downtown “trolley.” UVa paid the city $134,000 last year for employees to have access to CTS, and contributed $57,000 to the operation of the trolley, which goes between the university and the Downtown Mall.

The number of riders on UTS increased from 10,925 passengers in May 2007 to 17,189 in May 2008, according to UVa’s transportation and parking director, Becky White. CTS ridership also increased, from 120,495 to 135,103 in that timeframe, White said.

No choice but to drive

But many university employees live beyond the reach of those services in outlying counties and cities as far away as Waynesboro and Richmond. Some people use JAUNT, a bus service with routes in five neighboring counties. For everyone else, driving is the only option.

Linda Myers, a university employee at the Virginia Foundation for Humanities, is hoping to work four days a week, 10 hours a day, allowing her an extra day at home and one less trip to work. Myers, who commutes from Crozet, estimates she could save $4 a week or about $200 a year.

“When you’re driving to work there’s not a lot of ways to save on gas, so you have to cut back,” Myers said.

Schedules rearranged

Michael Kidd, a pathologist at the UVa Medical Center, commutes from Lake Monticello with his wife, a pharmacologist. Because they work near each other and have the same schedules, they will try to arrange a four-day work week to save money.

Myers and Kidd have the advantage of working at jobs with flexible hours, but a significant number of university employees work in shifts, including nurses, doctors and facility management staff.

Of 6,400 total employees in the UVa Health System, about 3,400 are in patient services, according to Peter Jump, spokesman for the UVa Health System. Doctors and nurses don’t have the option of adjusting their schedules on the fly because patients depend on them to be there.

As David Foreman, public relations coordinator for the Medical Center, said, “You can’t really telecommute as a nurse.”

Likewise, 900 facilities management employees work in shifts to maintain UVa’s buildings and grounds. Don Sundgren, chief facilities officer, said the top priority is being there to serve the UVa community at all hours.

“Whatever we do with alternate work schedules we’ve got to take that into account, because we are a 24/7 operation,” he said.

Jan Cornell, president of the Staff Union at UVa, supports the university’s move to help employees cover their costs, but added that the base salary of $10.14 an hour should be higher. Cornell estimated some commuters are spending a fifth of their weekly salary to get to work.

“I thought it was a bold move on UVa’s part and I was glad to see it, but we’ll see how it goes,” she said. Cornell is planning to revive a “living wage” campaign this fall to raise UVa’s base salary above $11 an hour.

Lower commuting costs?

The problem of high transportation costs is being taken up by the Virginia General Assembly, which met last week in a special session on transportation and will reconvene July 9. State Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, who represents the Charlottesville area, proposed three bills that would effectively lower commuting costs.

Two of the bills would give tax credits to businesses for allowing employees to work four-day weeks and telecommute, while the third would permit individual tax deductions for carpooling, walking or biking to work.

Through RideShare, a Central Virginia nonprofit that pairs up carpoolers, businesses can get or give tax breaks when employees take public transit or organize a vanpool. RideShare has presented this program to some of the largest employers in the area, including UVa, the city of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Lexis-Nexis, SNL Financial and State Farm Insurance, but none of them is using the program.

RideShare Director Lisa Horyani said that public transit is scarce outside Charlottesville and there are only two vanpools, but carpooling is “on the rise.” There are about 600 commuters in the RideShare database.

Louise Wyatt, an organizational development manager with Albemarle County, signed up with RideShare a year ago. Wyatt travels with a coworker three days a week and drives herself the other two days to do errands.

Wyatt thinks carpooling makes sense for people who can fit it into their schedules, but added it’s not for everyone.

“I think it’s easy for people to say, ‘Oh, everybody should be carpooling,’ but it doesn’t work for a lot of people,” she said. “For me, it’s kind of a win-win situation.”

Home | About | Articles | Resources | Photos | Contact

WELCOME FACULTY!

WORKPLACES EMPLOY GAS-SAVING WAYS-THE DAILY PROGRESS, JUNE 28, 2008

Comments

Recent Articles:

Recent Article Comments: