Tom eyes carpool services

After Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña floated the idea of having carpool services in City Hall, an official said he will recommend to the mayor to encourage universities and private companies to follow.

City Administrator Nigel Paul Villarete, also an urban planner, said the city government can only encourage these institutions to do carpool program.

Villarete said a carpool means two or four people share the ride to work or school in a single vehicle.

The entire idea and goal of carpooling is efficiency, saying if there are four people in a single car, it means they only occupy 1/4 of the road space covered by a single car with only one passenger.

This way, it makes carpooling four times more efficient.

“We can start with city hall first. A lot of city hall employees live in the same general area (sitio, village, subdivisions) and some have cars. If we can encourage them to carpool, then that would be fewer cars on the road,” he said.

Villarete said City Hall itself can also field vehicles for carpooling like what is being done in the city of Los Angeles in California where they have Vanpool services.

He said there will be a survey among city hall workers for the program.

As for the Transportation Vehicle Network Service Grab and Uber, Villarete said he has been working closely with them to provide carpooling services even if it is not profitable on their part.

“We need to pressure Grab and Uber to offer their own carpooling services in Cebu. They have this in Manila though they don't place any emphasis on this,” he said.

He said he has initially talked to officials of Grab and Uber two weeks ago and told them that they should offer the same services in Cebu.

“I challenge them to help in Cebu's traffic congestion problem and their carpool services would be of much help,” he said.

Marvette A. Demecillo/MBG