I was aware of Commute Easy since long but thanks to Radio One campaign that this came back to my mind again. I have sort of become a very regular listener of Radio One because of it being the only Bollywood fm channel in Bangalore as of now and of late I have been hearing this “Let’s pool in’ campaign quite a lot on this channel. It’s a public service initiative launched by Radio One in association with Commute Easy and Bangalore Traffic Police to address the traffic woes of the city. www.commuteeasy.com is a car pooling website wherein one can register and search for people travelling to same destinations / route. You can search and register for pool depending upon the start and end destination as well as time of your commuting. One has the option to go by his own vehicle or any other vehicle in case you don’t possess one of your own. Apart from the site being very user friendly, it has got an interesting etiquette section as well, which chalks out the Dos and Donts neatly and helps to answer some questions regarding fee share etc which you might have in mind esp. when car pool concept is not so common in India.
I must say it’s a very nice initiative by Radio One and Bangalore Traffic Police. Traffic situation currently in Bangalore is nothing less than a nightmare and in fact it is getting worse day by day. As per statistics revealed by Praveen Sood, additional commissioner of police (traffic & security) – Bangalore has 32 lakh vehicles vis-a-vis a 60-lakh population as against Mumbai with 18 lakh vehicles in a population of 1.2 crore (Source: Times of India dated 28th Nov’08). Oh no wonder our traffic congestion is sooo bad and deadlier than any other metropolitan city in India. We always crib about traffic and all that, now at least here is an opportunity for us to do our bit to solve the traffic issues to some extent. I have personally tried this service last year for travelling from my home to work and for few days and I did find some good car pooling options that time. I had informed about Commute Easy to some people as well but then with passing time I had almost forgotten about this website. Good to be reminded about this service again through this campaign of Radio One! And not only Radio One is spreading the awareness rather they are giving some extra benefits like free movie tickets, invitation to some hip parties, song requests etc to all commute easy users. Well those are definitely some cool incentives to motivate people for using this service. I am personally all for this campaign and I will encourage all Bangaloreans out there to definitely go and check out www.commuteeasy.com once.
Rhett
And how i wish this is a success!
Abhishek
Very nice initiative really. In my company, the Employee Club too had started this sort of thing within company. I don’t know its whereabouts now 🙂
Ravi
Agree,even I am in favor of this campaign. We all need to do something to improve Bangalore traffic, else it will never improve at all!
Kanupriya
@ Rhett: Same here 🙂
@ Abhishek: Oh gr8!Well if employees do it jointly then too I am sure it can work wonders
@Ravi: Yes, so I think all those who can manage to have common time and common route should try this service
Vipul
Thanks for spreading the word on commuteeasy 🙂 nice article.
I had also like to inform the readers of your blog that if they are looking at setting up a custom carpooling solution for their organization, we would be more than happy to do so. We will be doing that for schools,residence complexes and corporates.
Cheers
VIpul
nautankey
Good work there…have heard about it but this is the first time got a link to their site.It will take some time for this concept to pick up in india,but still there shud be some starting point and its nice to see it is here 🙂
Kanupriya
@ Vipul: Thanks for the same…Hope my readers here are noticing your comment 🙂
@ Nautankey: yea it has to start somewhere after all.
tanvi
kanu have u invited people for a car pool? 🙂