Save on gas and car mileage. Try a vanpool.

Imagine taking your normal 45-minute hectic, stressful drive to work, all by yourself with no one but the FM radio for company, and transforming it into a mobile morning "coffee and donuts" with your office co-workers. Does this seem too good to be possible? It's not only possible, but it happens everyday, to other commuters.

In the morning, the commuters are either picked up at home by their fellow commuter/van driver, or meet at a designated place, usually a Park & Ride lot where they all get into the comfortable custom van for a leisurely ride to work. Each of the riders (except the volunteer driver, of course) can relax and have morning coffee, read the morning paper, or even catch a few more minutes of sleep on the way to work.

The neat part about vanpooling is that the schedule and payments are all up to the individual vanpool groups. Groups can decide to rotate drivers, rotate who pays for gas or tolls, or all chip-in together every time. They can decide to have one dedicated driver who takes the van home, or arrange to leave the van at the Park & Ride lot each night and have several sets of keys so more than one commuter can drive if needed. If work schedules change, the group can change their schedule to match. No more fumbling with bus schedules to find the connections when you need to be at work earlier, it's that easy!

And parking the van, well, that's easy. Now you only need ONE parking space, not 8, 10 or 15! Many employers in the Chester County area have even provided reserved parking spaces just for vanpools, with shorter walking distances to the doors to make the experience even more appealing to the employees. If you need to pay for parking where you work, the vanpool will save you even more money since now the other riders chip-in to pay for ONE space, and you don't need to pay for it all by yourself. If you use the turnpike to get to work, the tolls are now spilt between all of the riders, saving even more money. The vanpool vehicles are eligible for an EZ-Pass for use on the PA turnpike and Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) bridges if they are needed.

Contact the TMACC for more information.