Sure, it would be great if we could all bike commute year-round. And some people do. But bike commuting is not always possible, or practical. For longer commutes and other limiting factors, it is important to think outside the box and find the commute option that works for each individual’s needs. That is why the Oregon Department of Transportation created Drive Less Connect, a secure, easy-to-use online ride-matching tool that matches people who are traveling the same way for work and play.
Workers at Advanced Energy in Bend use Drive Less Connect to help find alternatives modes for their commutes. The design and manufacturing facility for solar inverter systems, located in NE Bend on Brinson Blvd., is a workday destination for approximately 150 commuters. Nearly one-third of Advanced Energy’s employees have a user account through Drive Less Connect, said Jason Oman, an electrical engineer and Commute Options liaison for Advanced Energy Industries, Inc.
About half of the Advanced Energy employees using Drive Less Connect are carpooling, said Oman, and the other half are bike commuting. Active users can find carpools or bike partners whose routes match their own, or log their trips using these commute options. An online Trip Calendar measures alternative commute activities and their financial and environmental savings, helping users to keep track of how much money, gasoline and CO2 is saved by leaving the car at home.
“Since Drive Less Connect launched in September 2011, nearly 60 percent of users have searched for a carpool match,” said Kathy King, partner liaison for Commute Options and manager of Drive Less Connect for ODOT’s Region 4 (The Dalles to Klamath Falls). People using carpools have saved nearly 43,000 trips over the year, said King.
Advanced Energy’s employees live mainly in Redmond and Bend, but some also live in Sisters, Prineville, La Pine and the Deschutes River Woods community in SW Bend. Some of these commuters with longer distances to travel have found year-round solutions in carpooling to work. From Deschutes River Woods alone, four employees are currently carpooling five times a week, said Oman.
Motorcycles are also a popular alternative to cars and trucks for several Advanced Energy commuters, said Oman. Up to 12 people use motorcycles throughout the year, resulting in commutes with better gas mileage, less congestion on the roadways and less crowding in parking lots compared to four-wheeled vehicles.
“Other options that people are looking at are walking and telework,” said King. “In the wintertime, working remotely one to two times a week is a really good option.” All of these alternatives have really added up, said King, who recently calculated the effects of the program users’ saved trips in Region 4. “These people have saved nearly a half million dollars in the past year,” she said.
Oman, age 30, is a regular bike commuter. He uses a “commuter fleet” of three to four bikes to bike an average of three days per week year-round. His fleet includes a fast bike for ideal summer conditions, single-speed for more leisurely commutes, a bike with fenders for rain and slush, and a mountain bike with studded tires for the worst-case cycling conditions.
“I like the exercise,” said Oman about why he bike commutes. “I get frustrated really easily in traffic, and it feels better mentally to cycle,” he said. Oman’s commute from SW Bend to his workplace is about six to seven miles each way, depending on the route he chooses.
The reason for the relatively high percentage of Advanced Energy employees who use commute options is not what people might think, said Oman. “We’re not predisposed to being super-green just because we design products for green industry,” he said. Oman believes that his coworkers are looking for different ways to commute for the same reason others do, mainly to save money on fuel costs. The active bike culture in Bend does help too, he said.
“Through one mode or another, over two million miles were not driven over the past year in Central Oregon because people used commute options,” said King.
For more information on Drive Less Connect, visit www.drivelessconnect.com.
Commute Options promotes choices that reduce the impacts of driving alone. For more information about Commute Options, contact Jeff Monson, Executive Director of Commute Options at 541-330-2647 or visit www.commuteoptions.org.
Annissa Anderson is a freelance writer and PR consultant in Bend.
