Responses to Carpool Issues
In the survey, respondents who identified themselves as carpoolers were asked a number of questions regarding reasons for carpooling, types of carpooling, and carpool formation time. The unweighted, raw results are presented in this section. In addition, SOV responses to reasons for NOT carpooling are also presented to provide information about the SOV perspective.
Reasons for Carpooling
In the survey, carpool respondents were given a list of literature-based reasons that might affect decisions on carpool formation. They were asked to rate them on a scale of importance from 1 to 5, with 1 indicating the least important and 5 being the most important.
Table 2 summarizes HOV respondents' mean rankings of importance among the 14 potential options proposed. There were between 84% and 89% response rates on most of the potential factors in their decision. Access to HOV lanes and relaxation while traveling had the top two mean scores at 3.77 and 3.60. Other carpooling reasons that were ranked relatively high by the survey respondents were:
- Enjoy traveling with others
- Help the environment
- Travel time saving
Table 2: Reasons for Carpooling
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Reasons for Not Carpooling
The respondents who indicated SOV as their primary mode choice were later asked to identify their most important reasons for not carpooling, and were allowed to check all that apply from the list shown in Table 3. The most important reasons cited for their decision-making were difficulty of finding someone with the same location and schedule, flexibility of driving alone, and needing a vehicle during the day (55%, 45%, and 39% of SOV respondents, respectively). The need for making chain trips was perhaps a little less important but still notable with 28% choosing it.
Table 3: Reasons for Not Carpooling
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Carpool Formation
In the survey, carpoolers were asked whom they traveled with on their most recent trip. The results of the responses by HOV2 and HOV3+ travelers are shown in Table 4. Results exceeded 100% as survey respondents could check more than one passenger type when appropriate. Overall, HOV users carpooled with their family members most of the time. When the rates of adult family member and child carpools are combined, 75% of responses included those two. The second most popular type of carpool was between co-workers and/or someone who worked in a nearby office building. The prevalence of this type of carpool was about 26%. Casual and neighbor carpools were both marked about 4% of the time, and examples of other types of carpools, which made up about 9% of the responses, include boy/girl friends, roommates or housemates, as well as significant others.
Table 4: Types of Carpools
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Carpoolers were also asked to enter in the amount of time, in minutes, it takes them to form their carpools. In other words, how much extra time they spent picking up and dropping off their passengers that they otherwise would have saved by traveling straight to work. The results are shown in Table 5. About 55% of HOV2 and 42% of HOV3+ users reported they spent no extra time due to their carpools. Another 20% of HOV2 and 23% of HOV3+ took five or fewer minutes to do so. An additional 11% of HOV2 and 14% of HOV3+ spent 6 to 10 minutes, meaning that a full 86% of HOV2 respondents and 76% of HOV3+ respondents spent 10 minutes or less in carpool formation. The remaining spent 11 or more minutes doing so. The average time of carpool formation was about 5 minutes with a standard deviation of 8.3 for HOV2s, and 7.8 minutes with a standard deviation of 13.1 for HOV3+s.
Table 5: Carpool Formation Time
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