To pool, or not to pool the car in Slatina, that is the question

In October 2017, the CityMobilNet project team conducted a survey of the Municipality employees on traveling to and from work. Following the interpretation of the collected data, several positive aspects have emerged: 25% of the respondents do not know how to drive, so they use either public transport or share the car with someone in the household or are already car-pooling or walking. In about 70% of cases the distance is less than 3 km from home to work.

Although some employees have a personal car or use a car, they do not always use it to travel to and from work, but walk or use public transport, even use car-pooling or combine ways of travel depending on weather conditions, available time or other issues that influence this decision. Also, the percentage of people walking to and from work (34.21%) finds correspondence in the traffic study carried out within the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan Slatina and the modal split, which shows that 35% of the population goes on foot.
Travelling behavior is also infuenced by the way the work program allows moving - fixed program or flexible program, and 245 of the respondents (over 88%) have fixed work schedule. The fixed schedule would allow people to set their meeting point and time of departure, so they could easily car-pool.
In most cases, respondents never had a car-pooling arrangement, but the phenomenon is not unknown, as 56 people (around 20%) adopted this mechanism either informally (unpaid) or formally (paid).
Of the total of 277 respondents, 96 people (approximately 35%) are willing to try a car-pooling arrangement for going to and from work, in some cases depending on aspects such as: traveling with a known person or traveling with an unknown person provided they can learn more about that person. This whole situation is reflecting the degree of mistrust between people, combined with the individualism that is currently being recorded in society.
Also, for respondents who are willing to car-pool, the main destinations would also be: airport or local shopping (24%) or trips to events or out-of-town trips - leisure, socializing - to a greater extent (39%).
In the case of a formal car-pooling arrangement (price / km), most respondents (30%) consider that a 1.00 lei / km is a reasonable price – which is less than the taxi fare / km. And the reasons behind a decision to car-pool mainly consist of saving the money that would otherwise be allocated for fuel. But this is not the only reason, on second place there are reasons such as saving the time for travelling and avoiding headaches when searching for a parking space. A fairly high percentage of respondents (about 20%) are thinking about environmental issues and the fact that reducing the number of cars on the roads can lead to improved environmental conditions. More relaxed, 4.60% of respondents consider car-pooling as a way to meet interesting people.
The fact that people walk in a fairly high percentage (34.21%) is the element that could hinder the faster development of a car-pooling system, motivated by the fact that employees have a relatively short distance to go for getting to work.
The openness shown by the respondents to the car-pooling mechanism is the element that leads to the conclusion that Municipality can make some progress with well-targeted and sustained campaigns that encourage car-pooling.