Smart Commute Toronto launched last week, with the aim of moving people away from driving to work alone. How could they possibly achieve this, you may ask? Well the usual "working with businesses" tenet is given (good luck with that) but I thought I'd look a little closer at their "Carpool Zone" to see if there was anything real going on there. Is it really possible to find a ride?

I filled out the form and hypothetically supposed that I was still living at my parents' place in Mississauga, traveling to Ryerson University during the week, and looking for a ride. Admittedly, here is where I was expecting to find a neat but essentially useless tool since no one uses it. Wrong. It actually spit out close to ten viable drivers looking for passengers! I'm impressed (not easy). Now I didn't go to the next step (of actually arranging rides), so I can't comment on how that would go.

So my skeptical self managed to partially affirm itself by noting Smart Commute's promises to encourage biking, walking, and public transit by partnering with businesses is mostly nonsense. But kudos to the carpool section of their website. You can actually find people looking to share rides!

Essentially the same program has been launched in other other GTA municipalities but now we have our own version coordinated through the City's Toronto Environment Office. Check out Smart Commute's main page for more info on their programs.

Photo by Eyeline-Imagery in the blogTO Flickr pool.