No. H162/06
For release November 23, 2006

MINISTER CANNON CONGRATULATES SMART COMMUTE
ON CARPOOL ZONE FIRST ANNIVERSARY AND EFFORTS
TO REDUCE SMOG AND GREENHOUSE GASES

OTTAWA - The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, today extended his congratulations to the Smart Commute Association on the first anniversary of the launch of Carpool Zone, a web-based ride matching service. The service is designed to help commuters in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Hamilton find carpool matches.

To date, the Smart Commute Initiative has yielded real results in the GTA. About 100 cars a day were taken off the roads over the last year thanks to this initiative. In addition to easing traffic congestion and noise, some 300 tons of greenhouse gases were eliminated from the environment.

"I congratulate the Association for the success of its Smart Commute Initiative as we mark the first anniversary of the Carpool Zone," said Minister Cannon. "Canada’s New Government continues to support projects that represent real action towards reducing both air pollution and greenhouse gases to protect the health of Canadians and the environment."

Carpool Zone is a service under the Smart Commute Initiative, part of the Urban Transportation Showcase Program, a five-year program created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in Canadian cities. Transport Canada has committed $2.5 million to the Smart Commute Initiative. This is one of eight municipal projects across the country to receive funds from Transport Canada.

Carpool Zone, accessed from the www.carpoolzone.smartcommute.ca website was built in partnership with Pathway Intelligence Inc., a producer of web-based ridesharing platforms. The carpool matching service acts as a searchable database of classified ads and serves a 250-kilometre radius from downtown Toronto across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Commuters create a free account where they fill out a simple questionnaire about their commute, such as time, origin and destination, in order to use the service.

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Backgrounder

URBAN TRANSPORTATION SHOWCASE PROGRAM

The $40-million Urban Transportation Showcase Program funds community showcase programs that demonstrate and evaluate ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and addressing other urban challenges, such as air quality, congestion, safety and rising operating costs.

The program was developed in consultation with provincial, territorial, municipal and other partners. Following a nation-wide call for proposals, eight municipalities were selected to showcase their strategies for dealing with these urban challenges.

Showcase proposals included: transportation services, infrastructure investments, demand management initiatives, land use strategies, pricing strategies, public outreach and advanced technologies.

The five showcases that are underway are:

• the City of Whitehorse’s "Whitehorse Moves" - A strategy to reduce automobile use through active transportation infrastructure, public outreach and transportation demand management;
• Halifax Regional Municipality’s MetroLink - An innovative Bus Rapid Transit initiative that includes two new bus rapid transit corridors, transit priority measures and multimodal stations;
• the Region of Waterloo’s iXpress - A high-quality express bus corridor featuring transit priority measures, advanced technologies, multimodal stations and community marketing;
• the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton’s "Smart Commute Initiative" - An initiative that implements regional and local transportation demand management through a network of transportation management associations; and
• TransLink’s "Sustainable Region Showcase for Greater Vancouver" - A six-part project that includes a bus rapid transit corridor, pedestrian priority, hybrid buses, a 24 km greenway cycling path, transit "station villages", household-based marketing and more efficient movement of goods.

Detailed program information is available on Transport Canada's website at www.tc.gc.ca/utsp/.

November 2006