Campus employees are reducing costs and embracing convenience through university-sponsored alternative transportation initiatives

by Kara Furlong
photography by Steve Green, Jennifer Priddy and John Russell

When gas prices climbed above $4 per gallon in Middle Tennessee last summer – and her gas costs topped $600 per month – Murfreesboro resident Neena Dixit, a Vanderbilt staff scientist in molecular physiology and biophysics, realized she had to make a change.

Using a ride match Web site sponsored by Vanderbilt Medical Center, Dixit connected with Missy Pankake, a university public affairs officer also eager to cut her commuting costs. The two started a carpool, trading off driving duties every other day. They soon were joined by Ron Reed, a systems support specialist at the medical center, who helped to further reduce their expenses and time behind the wheel each week.

When the three learned that Vanderbilt was organizing a vanpool for their area, they joined up. Reed was tapped to serve as driver, and last November the Murfreesboro/Smyrna vanpool embarked on its maiden commute. By January, the van had reached its capacity of around a dozen dedicated riders.

Dixit, for one, is thrilled. Not only are her monthly gas costs a fraction of what they used to be, but the vanpool has given her an unexpected gift.

“My hands are free, my mind is free, and my ride into work is leisurely now,” she said.

The More the Merrier
Vanpools are the latest addition to the slate of transportation alternatives being sponsored by Vanderbilt to encourage its large pool of employees to utilize mass transit options and to decrease the number of single-passenger commutes to campus. In doing so, employees save money, free up parking spaces and boost the environment by reducing the number of cars on the road. But more and more, faculty and staff who come to the initiatives for cost savings are sticking with them for the convenience and other benefits they offer.

Vanderbilt currently has three vanpools made possible through a partnership with the Regional Transportation Authority. RTA provides the 12-passenger vans, while Vanderbilt assembles interested riders through its Ride Match site, screens the drivers and underwrites some operating costs. Each rider pays a monthly fee based on mileage traveled, current gas prices and the number of people participating, while Vanderbilt completely covers the drivers’ costs as an incentive for taking on that responsibility.

Reed says he doesn’t mind being his vanpool’s driver and even prefers it that way. In addition to totally eliminating his daily commuting expenses, like other participants he sees less wear and tear on his car and a reduction to his personal auto insurance rates – a perk many carpool and vanpool participants enjoy.

Reed doesn’t even mind being the de facto leader of the group, whose members come from all walks of university and medical center life.

“It’s actually been a great experience,” he said. “We have people who are professors at the university. We have management from the medical center, and people who work in the Baker Building in media. We have nurses and research assistants. It’s really a variety of people, and we all get along.

“That was probably my biggest concern going in: What kinds of personalities would we get, and would there be any clashing?” Reed said. “But the nice thing we did is, we had a couple of meetings prior to starting the vanpool and came up with some ground rules.”

Chief among them is allowing a five-minute grace period beyond the designated meet-up time before the van leaves anyone behind – though tardiness hasn’t been a problem within the group.

“Ron is a great driver,” Dixit said. “Our contract says he doesn’t have to phone you after the five-minute window, but Ron will call to see if you are only a few minutes away.”

Another rule states that if inclement weather closes schools in Rutherford or Davidson counties, the vanpool won’t run that day. There are back-up drivers in place and an extra set of keys if Reed has a personal emergency, falls sick, takes a vacation or otherwise can’t drive the van. And if any rider misses the vanpool home or experiences an emergency during the day, he or she can redeem a voucher for free use of a rental car. There’s even a plan in case the van breaks down – a taxi service will deliver the riders wherever they need to go, free of charge.

All in all, Reed said, it’s a pretty genial group.

“Sometimes it’s quiet in the mornings. Or sometimes, discussions break out depending on the news of the day, or if the Titans are winning or losing.”

Some riders use the commute to read, sleep, listen to music or catch up on work. Others, like Dixit, simply savor the opportunity to relax and ride.

A Win-Win
Vanderbilt is keen to subsidize vanpools and other alternative transportation initiatives because they help to remedy an ever-present challenge on campus. The medical center alone hosts as many as 30,000 employees, outpatients and inpatient visitors per day, and most are competing for a limited amount of parking.

Vanderbilt administrators think long and hard before constructing new parking, explained Ken Browning, director of plant operations for the medical center.

“The smart thing to do is to wait as long as possible, because parking is expensive,” Browning said. “A single parking space costs on average about $23,000 to build. That’s money put to better use in a bank, collecting interest.

“You also don’t want to add parking until you absolutely need it, because you can’t build parking garages in small increments,” he said. “It’s a major undertaking. You can’t build a couple of floors; you have to build the whole thing.”
Browning said Vanderbilt has considered off-site parking as a means of preserving valuable green space, but the cost of running shuttles to and from campus makes that prohibitive.

When Nashville’s Metropolitan Transit Authority approached Vanderbilt and other area universities several years ago with a plan to subsidize the cost of its community members to ride MTA buses, Vanderbilt welcomed it as a step in the right direction. Since 2004, all full- and part-time employees of the university and medical center have been eligible to ride MTA buses to and from work for free with a swipe of their Vanderbilt ID cards. Participation in the program has grown by about 10 percent each year, with Vanderbilt graduate students gaining free-fare access last August.

“I think what’s really cool about the Free Ride to Work program is that it began largely to solve a parking problem, but it does so many other things as well,” Browning said. “It provides free transportation for employees; it’s a way for Vanderbilt to support a mass transit program in our community that is federally subsidized and needs our riders; and it’s good for the environment. If you have to spend the money anyway, why not spend it to alleviate a problem and achieve all these extras? It’s a win-win situation.”

More than Lip Service
Jennifer Hackett is a regular bus rider with a vested interest in mass transportation. As Vanderbilt’s recycling coordinator in the sustainability and environmental management office, she feels her commute allows her to – in this case – “ride the walk” she advocates in her work every day.

Hackett used to ride her bicycle to the bus stop near her West Nashville home. After her son was born in 2007, she began driving and parking at a church near the stop, where she now boards the bus with her toddler and his stroller. When they arrive at Vanderbilt, she pushes him across campus to day care. A more involved process than simply driving in, yes; but worth it, Hackett says.

For one thing, both ride for free – Hackett as a Vanderbilt employee, her son as a child under the age of 4, per MTA regulations. “I’m good to go with him for at least a couple more years,” she laughed.

“But there’s also a big interaction difference between driving in a car with your toddler versus riding together on the bus. I’m more apt to talk with him about the things we see out the window, and it’s been fun to help him learn to interact in a safe way with the other people on the bus,” she said. “That aspect has been really nice. We have some quality time together before he goes off to have his adventure for the day.”

And what has her son’s reaction been?

“My child loves the bus,” Hackett said. “He loves to get on and flirt with the other riders. The bus driver knows his name. He plays peek-a-boo with everyone. It’s definitely been a community builder.”

A Good Habit is Hard to Break
Mary Pat Teague, associate director of community, neighborhood and government relations at Vanderbilt, understands the sense of camaraderie shared by regular bus commuters. It was heightened last summer, she recalls, when gas prices were at their peak.

“When gas was around $4.50 a gallon, the buses were packed,” Teague said. “There was barely standing room. But it was almost like a party atmosphere. People were very festive, cheerful and considerate of one another.”

Ridership returned to normal levels when gas prices began to fall, said Teague, who rides the bus most weekdays from her home in Bellevue. “But there are a lot of people who say, ‘I started riding when gas prices were high, but I found I just like it. It works for me.’ They’re continuing to ride, which is a very positive thing.”

It also makes good sense. Energy experts say gas prices tend to be cyclical, and they are currently on the rise. With the approaching summer travel season and the potential for hurricanes to disrupt oil refineries in the Gulf, American drivers could easily find themselves in the midst of another gasoline price crunch.

Zip to It
Teague strongly believes in doing her part to consume less and conserve more. In addition to riding the bus to work, she walks to all of her meetings on campus and in the immediate area. But her job, which entails serving as liaison between the university and Nashville’s neighborhood and civic groups, often requires her to travel distances she can’t reasonably reach on foot. For instance, Teague meets frequently with groups in the Berry Hill area, where the medical center recently opened Vanderbilt Health at One Hundred Oaks.

When Traffic and Parking introduced its Zipcar program last August, Teague was thrilled. “As a bus commuter, it opens up so many more possibilities,” she said.

For a nominal fee, individuals or departments may purchase membership to the program, which allows users to reserve online one of five vehicles for short-term rental: a Honda Civic for $7 per hour or a Honda CR-V for $8 per hour parked in Lot 84 near The Commons Center; a Civic or CR-V parked in Lot 3 near the corner of West End and 21st avenues; or a Volvo S40 sedan for $10 per hour parked in Lot 15 near the Sarratt Student Center. Daily rates are also available, and the rental fee covers gas up to 180 miles as well as insurance.

“For students who live on campus but don’t have a car, Zipcars are a great option for running errands,” said Assistant Director of Real Estate Ally Sullivan, whose office oversees the program in conjunction with Traffic and Parking. “But they’re also useful for mass transit commuters going off-campus for appointments, or departments transporting groups to luncheons or meetings.”

Teague said she uses Zipcars several times a month for work-related activities.

“The program is easy to use and makes commuting on public transportation even more feasible.”

Making it Work
Filomena Palmer has learned to make the most of her long commute, in more ways than one.

For years, she traveled only a few minutes from her Cookeville home to work at Tennessee Tech University. But when she took a new job last August as a program coordinator at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, she also took on a 170-mile roundtrip daily commute.

As she was interviewing for the Vanderbilt job, someone mentioned to her the possibility of using the Music City Star, a commuter rail service that runs from Nashville to points east, with stations at Donelson, Hermitage, Mt. Juliet, Martha and Lebanon. Vanderbilt offers up to a 60 percent discount on Music City Star tickets to full-time medical center and university employees.

Palmer describes herself as “not a morning person” and was a bit daunted by the prospect of having to make the train’s early departure. After all, the station nearest her home – Lebanon – is still 40 minutes away. But after a few weeks of driving on pins and needles through rush-hour traffic, she was ready to give it a try.

“It’s a longer commute taking the train, but it’s leisurely,” she said. “You can read, you can write, you can pay your bills. It isn’t necessarily a time saver, but it’s definitely a convenience.”

Palmer uses her time on the train to work on a book she’s writing about her late brother, a Vietnam veteran who came home from the war with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and battled the illness throughout his adult life. She’s collaborating with a psychiatric nurse to offer both a clinical and personal perspective on how professionals can partner with families dealing with mental illness. She’s also made a valuable contact in fellow rider Linda Reynolds, a faculty assistant at Vanderbilt Law School who’s offered to edit her manuscript.

One day last fall, Palmer had an “aha” moment. She realized her nearly two-hour commute each way contributed to a lot of extra sitting during her day – from her home to the Lebanon station, on the train into Nashville, on the shuttle from the downtown station to campus, and all of that again on the reverse commute. “I got tired of being passive,” she said.

Palmer decided to team up with fellow train rider Patsy Sanders, an executive assistant in public affairs, to walk the distance from campus to the downtown station several afternoons a week. They are met along the way by Marilyn Lowry, a computer systems analyst for Vanderbilt Medical Group. The trio makes the trek from campus to First Avenue in about 35 minutes.

“With my very long commute, I have no time for formal exercise, so this is perfect,” Palmer said. “I also feel very honored to have hooked up with the ladies with whom I walk.”

Like many carpoolers, vanpoolers, bus riders and train commuters, Palmer is taking what can be an unpleasant aspect of working life – the grind of the daily commute – and making it work in her favor. As more and more employees jump on the alternative transportation bandwagon, they are discovering what current commuters already know. Alternative transportation may take a little more time, planning and effort, but it pays dividends in terms of dollars saved, human connections made, and attaining that rare and sought-after goal: the ability to carve out time for oneself during the busy workday.

Get on Board:

To connect with employees from your area interested in carpooling or vanpooling, visit www.vmcridematch.com.

To find MTA bus schedules and routes, visit www.nashvillemta.org.

To learn more about the Music City Star commuter rail service, visit http://rtarelaxandride.com/commuterrail.html.

To sign up for Zipcar membership and browse the vehicles, visit www.zipcar.com/vanderbilt.


Did You Know?

According to Vanderbilt’s Sustainability and Environmental Management Office, each VU employee who rides an MTA bus to work instead of driving reduces his or her greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 95 percent. The approximately 500 employees who currently commute by bus are saving Nashville nearly 12,000 metric tons in carbon dioxide equivalents each year.

Posted 04/01/09