After taking more than a decade to be home with her children, Maxine chose to return to the workforce. She was happy to find a contract job working for a Redmond employer but her daily commute from Lynnwood soon took its toll. Each day she spent nearly two hours of unproductive, tedious driving, sitting alone in a car with no one to talk to and it wasn’t long before she realized there had to be a better way to get to work.

 

In many work places, a common area of bonding is over horrible commutes. Maxine heard people in her office talking about how they were able to make their commutes more comfortable by joining a vanpool. After being directed to the Community Transit Website, she was able to find two vanpool matches for her commute. She reached out to both and while neither one was a perfect fit, one worked better. Maxine chose the vanpool that got her to and from work closest to the right time. The only downside was her vanpool only rode together Monday through Thursday and she was left to fend for herself on Fridays.

 

When it came time to pay for her new commute, Maxine turned to the transportation boards around her office. She discovered that Go Redmond offers a lot of help for people choosing not to drive alone to work, including a $50 monthly subsidy for one year for vanpool riders, in addition to monthly drawings for logging smart commute trips. She applied online and was able to make her commute better and cheaper!

 

Maxine loved being part of her vanpool. People were generally quiet in the morning, but they chatted with each other on the ride home. However, Maxine’s schedule was less flexible than the rest of her vanpool and if they got a late start or hit any especially heinous traffic she found she was at risk for making it to work on time. In a serendipitous twist, the other vanpool Maxine had considered was struggling to find enough riders. With the help of GRMTA Program Manager Cindi Gyselinck, a few rounds of emails resulted in a new vanpool group. The first group that needed riders merged with an additional smaller vanpool. With the bigger group, they were able to upgrade to a larger van. Now, not only does Maxine not need to drive by herself every Friday,  she has a vanpool that works better with her schedule.

 

Greater Redmond TMA is happy to award Maxine for her efforts to reduce the number of times she drives alone to work. She has been awarded a $250 Groupon gift card and has a chance to win a grand prize worth $1000 at the end of 2018.

 

To submit yourself or your own COMMUTE CHAMPION, fill out this questionnaire.

* Winners for Q2 2018 will be selected in July. All submissions will remain valid for the duration of the 2018 season. There is no need to submit multiple times.