It gives the joy of travelling in a group, sharing a vehicle, and conserving fuel. Car pooling – a concept common in several other countries and getting popular in cities such as Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru – has made its entry into Coimbatore too.
A group of friends, colleagues, or neighbours come together, one of them brings their car and they travel together to work, neighbouring towns or even other cities.
O. Subramanian, a software professional who had worked in a European country earlier, visits his wife and child in Madurai every weekend. He posted his interest in a car pooling website in Coimbatore. “But I have got only one response through the website. It is yet to pickup here,” he said.
The fuel expense is shared by those who travel. He said that three to five colleagues make trips to Madurai every week. “Earlier we used individual cars to travel more than 400 km – up and down – every week. When I shared this concept with them, we go in one car and have made seven such trips,” he says.
Chennai and Bengaluru have between 800 and 1,200 car pools operating on daily, weekly and bi-weekly basis on just one website. There are close to a dozen other sites that allow car users and commuters to join hands.
There are just a handful of such efforts in Coimbatore now, with only one pool within the district – from Pollachi to Coimbatore – where a commuter has come forward to offer trips or travel in another person’s vehicle between the two places every day. The other trips are between the city and Salem, Madurai, Tiruchi and Chennai in the weekends. With the boundaries of the city expanding and more apartments coming up in the periphery, more residents are expected to go in for car pooling.