Organizations offer businesses and residents incentives and tools for alternative commuting

With more than 200 students and 25 employees, Brandon Martin, founder of North Austin beauty and wellness school Avenue Five, wanted to reduce the school's traffic footprint and encourage students to ride public transit.

In November, Avenue Five Project Manager Taylor Howe worked with Capital Metro to sign up for the MetroWorks program to provide discounted transit passes for students and employees. Passes range from $10 for a 31-day local bus pass to $25 for the 31-day commuter pass granting access to all bus routes and MetroRail.

"The majority of Austinites aren't familiar with the public transportation system and how much it's improved," Howe said. "We see ourselves as sharing that information. This was a way to try it out. It's getting that theme and message out and helping students and neighboring businesses understand it."

Martin said students who use the transit passes will see cost savings on their commutes.

"One of the ways we expect it to help students is to reduce the burden of debt when you go to school," he said. "With our program it's hard to have a full-time job. We expect the cost savings to be value added for prospective students. It also will reduce the traffic burden on the streets and result in fewer cars on the road."

The use of public transit as a reaction to traffic congestion is what many Austin leaders and organizations are hoping to see increase as one strategy to improving congestion in the Austin metropolitan area.

Roads not the only strategy

In August 2013 the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, which aims to solve multimodal transportation problems statewide, released a study of what it would take to improve mobility on I-35.

"You can't keep adding lanes to roads as your only strategy," TTI Senior Research Engineer Tim Lomax said. "That's clear to us when looking at big-city congestion—not that more lanes or toll roads don't have a role."

Researchers created traffic models for I-35 by incorporating all of the road projects identified in the 2035 long-range plan created by the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is responsible for Central Texas' long-term regional transportation planning efforts.

"When you look at 2035 the demand and trips are so large that the system is just overwhelmed," he said. "We tried a number of different strategies and projects, and at best they were [improving] congestion levels by 2035 by 5 percent."

This is where other travel options, such as telecommuting, carpooling or trying different modes of transit, will be vital to seeing noticeable improvements in mobility, he said.

Glenn Gadbois is the executive director of Movability Austin, which works with employers to reduce drive-alone behavior. Many local alternative commute options and tools are still in their infancy and not available to everyone, Gadbois said.

"We are in a transition mode," he said. "Everybody recognizes you can't have as many people driving who are driving, but you also don't have the [options] most people would need to make a shift. ... You don't have any of the richness of options that we will eventually have to make that really work for most people."

Gadbois said increasing access to options and tools will make a difference in changing driver behavior. A tougher task is convincing commuters to change their behavior and understand how that could affect congestion.

"That's still tough for us because it's one person at a time, and we don't know how to get there efficiently," he said.

Navigating options

Many area commuters are not aware of the tools available to aid them in selecting the best alternative commute, said Julie Mazur, program coordinator at Commute Solutions, which is part of CAMPO.

Commute Solutions provides alternative commuter resources and tools for residents and businesses. Its online myCommuteSolutions platform helps commuters find carpool, bike or walk partners, Mazur said. Businesses can create a customized subsite to manage carpooling for employees.

"What's very important is to have the critical mass in the system of people who have your same origin and destination, and that's what a business subsite can do," Mazur said. "It creates a critical mass of those folks coming and going in the same place."

Mazur encourages people to start small by trying an alternative once a week when it makes sense.

"Trying an alternative commute is something you can do right now," Mazur said. "You don't have to wait for a road to be built."

RideScout, a mobile app showing users available commute options near their location, launched in Austin in 2013. RideScout plans to expand the app's services in 2015 to make multimodal trips easier for users.

"Austin is a pretty tough city for us. It's still pretty rare to hear of people moving around the city without a car," said Rachel Charlesworth, the company's vice president of brand. "It is our big effort to make Austin a city with many transportation options."

Incentivizing commutes

For companies paying for parking, other modes of commuting could reduce costs. This was the case for Mutual Mobile, which saved more than $10,000 per year by signing up for Capital Metro's MetroWorks program, said Dan Dawson, Capital Metro's vice president of marketing and communications.

MetroWorks launched in August, and 30 employers have already signed up, Dawson said. Employers work with Capital Metro to tailor a program to encourage employees to give up parking spots and use transit. Employers may purchase discounted transit passes to offer to employees who forego parking. MetroWorks also provides training and resources to educate a business's employees about available options.

"Employees who take public transit are more healthy because they walk," Dawson said. "They're more productive because on the vehicles they can actually start their day a little earlier. It gives them more personal time. That was the impetus of what we can do."

Carpooling app company Carma found offering incentives to be the best way to motivate commuters to try carpooling.

The company launched in 2007 but came to Austin in February. Carma received a $750,000 federal grant to partner with the Texas Department of Transportation and the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority—which manages toll roads 183A and the Manor Expressway on Hwy. 290. The grant allows the Mobility Authority to reimburse tolls for drivers with more than one person in their vehicle, Carma Community Manager Lauren Albright said.

"We've learned it's five times more successful than incentives we've done in other cities," she said. "Getting a toll back—which people consider a tax, something they hate paying—is much more motivating than us giving gift card incentives."

In January, Carma plans to announce an expansion of its program.

"What we're trying to do is get people to think about changing and actually sharing the ride ...," Albright said. "Right now there's only so much capacity on our roads, but there's extra capacity in the cars we're driving."