Driven to Drive Less will officially launch Sept. 4 at the Boulder Hometown Creek Fair. But the campaign is looking for more sponsors and businesses that want to involve their employees. Anyone who is interested should visit driventodriveless.com or e-mail driventodriveless@gmail.com.
Got a blue car? The city of Boulder wants you to consider commuting sans car on Mondays.
Red car? Take a break from driving on Wednesdays. White? Thursday is your designated day of the week to leave your vehicle at home.
On Labor Day weekend, the city plans to launch a campaign to encourage residents to “do their 14.3 percent” to cut down on the number of cars on the road — reducing air pollution, cutting carbon and road rage — by making a commitment to go car-free on the day of the week that’s correlated to your vehicle’s color. Those that stick to their car-less commitments can win prizes from the campaign’s sponsors.
“We want to attract people to something other than driving for one day a week or more in a fun easy way,” said Cris Jones, a transportation planner with the city’s GO Boulder program.
Participation in the program — called Driven to Drive Less — will be voluntary, and so is the day that participants choose to take a break from being behind the wheel. (There’s no penalty for red-car-owning participants who commit to being car fee on the white-car day.)
The connection to car colors — and the program’s whimsical Web site, driventodriveless.com — is part of an intentional drive by the campaign’s designer, Sukle Advertising, to give a light-hearted feel to the car-cutting movement.
When the city, which is paying for the bulk of the program with a $105,000 Federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program grant, put out a request for proposals to run the Driven to Drive Less campaign, they got a lot of applications from traditional transportation consulting firms. Those proposals tended to be a little heavy on the wonky transportation jargon and a little light on the catchy inspiration that might actually stick with local drivers, Jones said.
So the city chose Denver-based Sukle Advertising, the firm responsible for Denver Water’s “Use Only What You Need” campaign, which included billboards that read, “Grass is dumb. Water 2 minutes less. You’re lawn won’t notice,” among other slogans.
“They were behind that campaign and everybody knows about it. It got people thinking,” Jones said. “They are really good at creating buzz around changing behavior.”
The idea for Driven to Drive Less is rooted in the one-less-car programs that have existed for years in several large U.S. cities, such as Seattle and Chicago. But unlike Boulder’s concept, most of those programs ask people to give up their cars for a month or even a year. In Seattle, the incentives for people who “break up with their cars” by selling them and agreeing not to buy a new one for a year include discounts to local car-sharing services and vouchers for the public transportation system.
“This is a different approach to the same theory,” Jones said of the Boulder campaign. “Those programs have several hundred participants and we’re looking for several thousand. “
If 2,800 people participate in Driven to Drive Less, that effect will be equal to taking 400 cars off the road, according to the city.
Jones said he didn’t have information on the success of the one-less-car programs operating in the United States, but he pointed out that many of the programs have been around for years. The Seattle program is almost a decade old.
Philip Winters, director of the Transportation Demand Management Program at the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research, said he’s never heard of a strategy similar to the one Boulder’s proposing. But he is familiar with a number of existing programs that encourage people to voluntarily not drive on “ozone action days,” and those programs have seen some results. Still, he said Boulder shouldn’t expect to see “huge shifts in travel behavior overnight.”
“The overall effectiveness probably depends on the involvement of the community and the availability of viable options such as transit service from home to work,” he said.
Other support structures that will likely help Driven to Drive Less thrive include employers who are willing to let employees telecommute; the existence of emergency-ride-home programs that prevent participants from being stranded if, for example, a child gets sick; and an infrastructure that allows for safe biking and walking.
One of the existing programs in the world that may be the most similar to Boulder’s Driven to Drive Less is based in Seoul, South Korea, where residents are encouraged to register online and pledge to not drive on a chosen day of the week. Participants are given an electronic tag to put on their windshields that can track compliance.
Seoul’s ” No Driving Days” program began in 2001, but a study published last year in the journal of the Transportation Research Board found that the campaign had only reduced daily car use in the city by 1.3 percent.
Boulder will have a year to see how the campaign works until federal funding runs out. If it’s successful, the city hopes more local businesses will step up to sponsor the program and keep it going.
Boulder resident Maggie Korey — who works from home and can sometimes go days without driving — said Friday she didn’t think a designated car-less day of the week would work for her.
“I don’t think I could do it,” she said. “I’m not going to reschedule a meeting or anything.”
Matt Bonoma, who was sitting with Korey on the Pearl Street Mall, agreed.
“I think it a fun, interesting idea,” Bonoma said. “But I don’t know that it would change my driving habits.”
Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 303-473-1327 end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 303-473-1327 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or sniderl@dailycamera.com.
