Everybody wants to share Louie

Louie is a compact efficient car and he’s my first freedom on wheels. Him and I commute to Sackville from Moncton and back 5 days a week. Call me crazy in a time where the aim should be to decrease our dependency on oil, and live and work locally, but on arriving back in Atlantic Canada from many years away, my options were limited.

In an ideal world I would park-and-ride on the zippy little commuter train from Moncton to Sackville in 45 minutes for the less than what it costs to drive. If Louie had it his way, we would park ourselves at our apartment across the road from the office, I would walk to work and he would leave the driveway only every now and then for leisurely trips into the beautiful New Brunswick countryside. Mini’s are allowed to dream too.

As it stands, we fill up the tank every Sunday night at the price of 62 bucks. This comes to $248 a month. Louie costs $300 a month, plus $200 in insurance (first time insurer’s pay premium for the first year). This led me to have a look online for some way to advertise my commute to see if someone else was traveling that way too and wanted to give up driving their car to come with me throughout the week. Why not share? I’m easy to get along with, and maybe it would be fun to make a new friend.

I Googled ‘rideshare moncton sackville’, resulting in 718,000 hits, and among the first few were Kijiji, Carpoolworld, and Maritime Rideshare. I picked the third option and posted my ride. Within a couple days Betty had introduced herself in an email to me, we arranged a time and spot for me to pick her up, and off we went, bumping happily along the TransCanada highway to and from our respective workplaces three times a week.

With the money from Betty, my monthly gas cost has gone down to $100. This saves me $148 a month, which I can throw into my savings account. That’s almost $2,000 a year. Not only do I look forward to seeing her now, making it easier to get up on those really cold mornings, but also we always have lots to talk about so the drive goes by in a wink.

Together, Betty and I have taken one whole car off the road, reducing our CO2 emissions by 14 kilograms a day, and I feel better about my commute. Here’s where it all started www.maritimerideshare.com

For more information on alternative transport in New Brunswick, contact
EOS Eco-Energy Inc.
www.eosecoenergy.com
eos@nb.aibn.com
506 536 4487