Win gas cards and ferry passes with TransLink Ride-Share Week, October 5-9!

Win Chevron gas cards and B.C. Ferries ferry passes during TransLink Ride-Share Week, October 5-9!

To win, just sign up at ride-share.com, a free ride-matching database from Jack Bell Ride-Share. Check out the video above to see how to register and learn more about the service.

Ridesharing can cut emissions and save you time and money. (Owning a car isn’t cheap: the CAA says an average car can cost $6,516 a year — $17.85 a day!)

With ride-share.com, you can organize a regular carpool or a casual rideshare a few times a week. You can also do one-time rideshares to specific events like concerts. The site also provides company portals, so if you’re an employee of, say, eBay, you can just look for ridematches within your own company.

Sign up to rideshare, or just sign up your existing rideshare arrangement so other people can join your group. All of you plus the current ridesharers will be entered to win the gas cards and ferry passes!

And don’t forget to enter the TransLink Ride-Share Week Photo Contest, where you could win a $100 Chevron gas coupon. (There are currently no entries, so your odds are good :)

By the way, this whole week is part of a national ridesharing awareness campaign, encouraging everyone to share car trips whenever possible. Try ridesharing now: it’ll help reduce traffic and is a great option for travel during the Winter Olympic Games!

See the Ride-Share bear at two park and rides next Monday

An artist's rendition of the Ride-Share bear wearing his Ride-Share t-shirt. Silly bear!

To kick off Ride-Share Week next week, the Ride-Share bear will be visiting two one park and ride on Monday, October 5!

Watch for the bear at the following locations:

(Sorry, the bear sent me a revised schedule in the afternoon — he will only be at Scott Road!)

Scott Road Park and Ride
6 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Richmond-Brighouse Park and Ride
8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

The bear and his friends can help you register at ride-share.com, which signs you up for ridematching services, plus enters you to win gas cards and ferry passes! They will also be providing handbills plus granola bars for a morning snack.

Enter the TransLink Ride-Share Week photo contest!

TransLink Ride-Share Week is coming up: October 5-9, 2009!

TransLink Ride-Share Week is coming up on October 5-9, and we’re running a contest to showcase your best ridesharing photos!

The grand prize is a $100 Chevron gas coupon, to help out with your ridesharing costs.

(By the way, ridesharing is also known as carpooling: the term “ridesharing” just seems to be more popular around here. It’s probably due to ride-share.com from Jack Bell Ride-Share, our region’s major ridematching database.)

How do I enter?

If you’ve captured an image that evokes the enjoyment of ridesharing—whether a fellow passenger is having a snooze, or you’re whizzing past people while driving in the HOV lane, or saving money and being green—we want you to share it with us!

Just upload up to three of your best ridesharing photos to the TransLink Ride-Share Week Flickr pool. In the photo description, tell us where the photo was taken, and tag the picture with “ride-share.com” (including quotation marks!)

To upload to the group, you can create a free Flickr account. If you don’t want to, just email your photo with the required info to michellec@ride-share.com, and we’ll put it up for you.

Enter your photos any time between now and October 9, 2009!

You can also sign up for free at ride-share.com to win more gas coupons and ferry passes during TransLink Ride-Share Week. You can find a new ridematch, or just register your existing ridesharing arrangement so others can join your ride. Again, the service is entirely free!

Judging

We’re going to ask you, the Buzzer blog readers, to vote on the winning photo at the end of Ride-Share Week. We’ll do a poll on Friday and you pick the best shot!

TransLink Ride-Share Week kicks off with Spirit of the West!

Well, if you haven’t heard already, TransLink Ride-Share Week starts today! We’re encouraging everyone in Metro Vancouver to rideshare whenever possible, and we’re giving away over 300 prizes if you use ride-share.com—a free online ride-matching database—from October 6-10.

To get a little attention, we kicked things off with a free Spirit of the West lunchtime concert in downtown Vancouver. Staff were on hand to help people sign up at ride-share.com, and I got Vince Ditrich, Geoffrey Kelly, and John Mann from the band to talk a little about their ridesharing experience:

(much thanks to Kris Krug for the camera work!)

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