Carlink - a MyCarpools Customised Service - wins Queensland Premiers Sustainability Award
Wednesday, 9 June 2010.
Carlink, an internet based corporate carpooling service built by MyCarpools for a
community organisation in the South Burnett region of south-east Queensland, has
taken out the Partnerships Award at the Queensland Premier's 2010 Sustainability
Awards night.
The Partnership Award goes to a, "a community and/or local government partnership for implementing climate change abatement or sustainability initiatives resulting in social and ecological benefits."
The objective of the participating organisation is to reduce the duplication of travel between small towns in the South Burnett and to the Wide Bay Burnett, Darling Downs, and Brisbane sub-regions. The Carlink software calculates fuel savings, road kilometres and carbon emissions for each journey logged. Savings amongst passengers' and drivers' organisations are also calculated.
The Carlink Project, led by the 'Graham House Community Centre' in the South Burnett Region, is a 'multi-organisation, member based corporate carpooling program. However this is not just a system that allows people to find each other and share rides from home to work. Carlink is aimed at reducing day time vehicle use by local staff from community, service and public sector organisations spread across the region who often have to drive long distances to service clients, visit regional offices and attend meetings. This 'trip management' function takes the traditional 'ride share to work' role of carpooling systems to a new level.
While it is early days, the software itself is proving to be robust and early adopters are signing up with ten organisations across the region joining up in the first month of operation. Sponsors too are supporting the cause with a half a dozen regional businesses agreeing to provide products or services that Graham House will be awarding as part of an incentives program.
Part of the innovation of Carlink is that partner organisations can all register on the Carlink site and create their own organisation profile, manage registrations of their own staff and generate reports on activity that their staff engage in, while at the same time all of the registered users can select potential ride sharing partners for occasional or regular travel from trips planned by all other users, irrespective of which organisation they come from.
Graham House, the 'host' can generate reports on all activity across all members providing an overview of the regional carpooling initiative and aggregating fuel savings, kilometres avoided and vehicles removed from the road among a number of other interesting travel behaviour statistics.
Sean Burke, Product Development Manager for MyCarpools, said that the Carlink product had obvious utility for regional Australia. "Travel patterns in regional Australia are quite different from that in the cities," Burke pointed out. "For many people living in regional centres or rural villages, driving to work can be a 100km daily commute and Carlink certainly has a role to play in reducing the unoccupied seats in cars going to work. However it is the day time journeys for work purposes that are very different from those conducted in city environments," Burke said.
"Carlink for instance allows workers to plan day time and multi-day journeys between regional centres with total trip distances in the hundreds of kilometres. This sort of occupational driving is a feature of regional Australia and there is a lot of capacity in that behaviour to co-ordinate travel, share rides and reduce costs, reduce vehicle wear and tear, reduce road kilometres and fuel use." Other benefits of sharing rides in rural areas might also include reduced risk of driver fatigue as a cause of accidents. "Given the range of organisations registering to participate on Carlink, I expect you are likely to see improved information sharing between organisations in the region as well," Sean Burke suggested. "We have already heard that active carpooling groups in city organisations do a lot of problem solving on the way to work, and they only get 30 minutes or so to talk. Imagine what benefits might come out of a successful culture of long distance ride sharing with many participating organisation in rural areas!!"
For further information Carlink contact enquiries@mycarpools.com
About MyCarpools
MyCarpools.com is the internet trading name of Carpool-it.com (Aust) Pty Ltd, Australia’s most established provider of corporate carpooling services. MyCarpools provides carpooling systems to the Coles Group Headquarters in Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, IBM Australia and Deakin University to name a few.
About Graham House
Graham House Community Centre was established in 1989 to provide services to meet the needs of community members across the South Burnett region. The Centre provides services in the areas of Family Support, Community Transport, Emergency Relief and is an agency for CentreLink. The Centre has an elected volunteer Management Committee of local residents and the Centre's administration is handled by a full-time Manager.
http://www.grahamhouse.org.au/