Carpooling Solution

February 2, 2010

Julie Perrone, asst. features editor  

Filed under Opinions

We see ads, posters and commercials every day, drumming the common theme of saving the environment into our heads. It is apparent that the Presentation community has taken steps towards being eco-friendly with recycling bins dotting the campus, an active SEAS club, and a ban on plastic, non-reusable water bottles. Still, there is one area where the Presentation community misses the mark: carpooling.

Carpooling seems simple enough; just swing by a friend’s house on the way to school. It could even be fun, blaring music at 7 a.m., still trying to conceal yawns and ward off sleep. Still, it seems that many, if not the majority of, Pres girls avoid this seemingly simple task.

It is not because of ignorance or apathy that many fail to carpool every day, but rather because the extra ten minutes it takes to pick up a friend could cost you a coveted space in the parking lot. With traffic and parking already hectic in the mornings, how can students be encouraged to put forth the effort and time to carpool and improve the environment? With such goals in mind, it seems that Presentation could motivate students towards carpooling with the reward of a reserved parking space.

Primarily, offering students who carpool a reserved parking space would encourage carpooling because students would no longer have to leave their houses extremely early, focusing on both picking up their friends and making it to the parking lot in time; instead, Presentation’s environmentally friendly carpoolers could pick up others on their way to school without losing sleep or worrying about parking the car on a side street and being late to class.

Besides saving time (and gas), increasing the number of carpoolers at Presentation would help alleviate the traffic problems and chaos in the mornings and afternoons. With more girls sharing cars and rides, there would be fewer student drivers and, as a result, fewer cars needing to cycle through traffic in the mornings. Then, not only would Presentation be doing its part for the environment, but the stress of every day’s drop-off and pick-up would be alleviated not only for parents but also the faculty members forced to monitor the situation.

But won’t this rule only encourage students to lie in order to get a parking space? It’s possible, but an easy way to reduce cheating would be to register all student carpoolers and have them sign a pledge to follow the rules; if they don’t, they lose parking lot privileges for the rest of the year. Occasional monitoring would keep those girls honest. An even more deeply troubling concern lies in the fact that students might be tempted to break laws in order to carpool. Laws state that drivers must have had their license for a year before driving other people in the car, but this rule might be the first thing disregarded by drivers desperate to get a reserved parking space despite their lack of driving experience. An easy solution would be to restrict carpool parking spots to second-semester juniors and seniors who can prove through permit paperwork that they’re in compliance with the law.

The Presentation community should seriously consider this idea of offering reserved parking spaces to carpoolers. With an improvement of the environment and a reduction of before and after school traffic, we should at least give try this method of encouraging carpooling through reserved parking spaces. With Presentation already being one of the more eco-friendly schools in the area, why shouldn’t we continue to make improvements and live up to our reputation?

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Tags: carpooling, Presentation