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News for Smart Commuters
Summer 2009
Fort Riley Reduces Carbon Footprint with New Vanpool Program Inside This Issue:
Fort Riley Reduces Carbon Footprint
Herbalife Wins Diamond Award
VPSI Interviews Frank Hoag
AFGE Teams up with VPSI
Van-Pools.com iPhone Giveaways!
John Miranda Wins NASA Award
Transportation News That Moves You
Overlooking the Kansas River valley, Fort Riley has a long, rich history. Opened in 1853, the fort served as a safe haven for travelers along the Oregon and Sante Fe trails. Many of the original buildings, constructed from beautiful native limestone, are still in use today. Fort Riley’s population is growing fast, with close to 40,000 DoD civilians, active duty and reservist soldiers and various independent contractors. Fort Riley’s growing population has spawned transportation issues, including congestion on roads and at entrance gates, on-post parking problems and longer commutes. In an effort to address these challenges, Fort Riley started a vanpool program with VPSI in June of 2009. Thanks to the leadership and dedication of Laura Morris with Fort Riley’s transportation department, seven new vanpools were started on June 1st. “The Vanpool program offers a great opportunity for riders, and benefits everyone. With the Mass Transportation Benefit program (MTB), our military and civilian personnel are commuting to work for little or no expense,” stated Ms. Morris.
The MTB is an allowance which enables eligible federal employees (military, civilians, or NAF) to receive a tax-free vanpool commuting benefit of up to $230 per month. "Riding in the vanpool has reduced my weekly mileage by two-thirds,” stated David Jones, Primary Driver/ Coordinator of one of the Fort Riley vanpools. Substantially reducing commuting miles on one’s personal vehicle is only one of the many benefits vanpoolers enjoy. Vanpooling reduces fuel consumption, tailpipe emissions and traffic congestion. Ms. Morris, also observed,“We are also working on reducing our carbon footprint with hybrid and E-85 vehicles within our GSA fleet. Vanpooling (which also provides E-85 vehicles) is one more way we can do that and help the environment.” Captain Pete Mathews, also a Primary Driver/Coordinator, had this to say about the MTB and vanpooling, “Everything seemed easy enough to try, and we're all just amazed that our government has such programs to resolve commuting problems in user friendly, convenient ways.”
VPSI Commuter Chronicle - Summer 2009
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Herbalife Wins First Diamond Award Los Angeles, CA The Rideshare Team at Herbalife International won its first Metro Rideshare Diamond Award for Outstanding Group Achievement. The category recognizes groups who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and rideshare advocacy. Alan Estacio, Valerie Castillo and Susan Trujillo make up the hard-working rideshare team at Herbalife in Torrance, California. Alan has been managing the program since 1998 and works alongside Valerie and Susan, who are in charge of employee transportation and their corporate fleet, respectively. VPSI nominated the team because of their willingness to go above and beyond to offer their employees a fully subsidized rideshare program. “Our company is all about being ‘green’ these days and maintaining an
effective rideshare program for the employees is a top priority,” says Alan who is very proud of what their team has achieved over the years. Despite fulfilling SCAQMD’s Rule 2202 requirement by paying annual fees, Herbalife also pays 100% of the cost for each employee to participate in vanpooling or public transit. In addition to the company subsidy, rideshare participants are offered other incentives such as preferred parking and internal ride-matching services. The team’s commitment to ridesharing impacts several Herbalife facilities in southern California. A prime example is when it was time to relocate employees to their L.E.E.D Certified offices at the newly-built L.A. Live complex (across from Staples Center). The team made sure each employee was provided with a
A Winning Team: (l-r) Susan, Valerie and Alan with their Diamond Award outside of the Herbalife facilities in Torrance, California.
personalized commuter package that provided a list of potential train routes they could use to get to work. Nearly 20% of the employees at the Torrance facility participate in several rideshare options: 20 employees are carpooling, 60 are in vanpools and 75 of them purchase monthly public transit passes. Herbalife International has been an exclusive account with VPSI since 2007 and we congratulate them on all their success!
VPSI Interviews Frank Hoag on Creativity and Innovation For this year’s VPSI International Managers’ Meeting, we invited Frank Hoag to join us and host a creative thinking workshop. He has served as President of Campbell Ewald and as the Chairman and CEO of Lintas Marketing Communications, and now focuses as a consultant of marketing design and creative activiation. VPSI challenged Frank to use his insight and encouragement to help our company think in new, creative ways. VPSI - Explain your philosophy about creativity and why it’s so important, yet under-emphasized in many companies
today? Why did you decide to start your company, Hoag & You? FH - In 30 plus years managing creative people in the advertising business I often questioned just how creative we were. As a constant student, always learning, I wondered just what creativity was.There are many definitions and very little agreement on what constitutes creativity. I like this one: “The ability to create a useful new idea.” The problem is useful. How do you interpret that? My philosophy is: “Creativity is best defined based on a specific application.” I am a business man so I am interested in creativity as it applies to business innovation. Innovation is a new idea put to work. Creativity has always been a key element in business; every new business is the result of someone having a useful new idea. Since innovation begins with ideas, and ideas come from creative minds, I started teaching creativity as the foundation
of innovation. VPSI - What were some of your previous work experiences that shaped your perspective on “organic innovation”? FH - I think it all started in the Army. As an officer I was taught to take care of the men I commanded first. If they were fed, rested, properly trained, equipped and listened to, the mission was more than half way to being achieved. I was shocked when I entered the business world to discover that was not the way business worked. VPSI - How much creativity do you see in American businesses today? FH - Creativity is exploding in business today. What used to be of interest to only an enlightened few business scholars has now become a major concern for many more executives. VPSI - What are some essential characteristics of a company that creates an environment that helps foster innovation? See Creativity, Continued on Page 4
VPSI Commuter Chronicle - Summer 2009
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AFGE and VPSI Team Up to Promote Commuter Benefits Program VPSI has teamed up with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to promote, to their existing and prospective members, awareness of commute to work benefits. AFGE wants to help members save money, manage their transit expenses, improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion and conserve energy. Last month, AFGE rolled out their new Commuter Benefit program on the national website’s Member Benefits page. VPSI already serves the commuter transportation needs of a significant number of federal employees across the country, especially with groups of commuters at VA Medical Centers and BOP facilities. The foundation of this program is a federal program called "Commuter Choice" established by Executive Order 13150.The program enables individuals to set aside a portion of their salary, before taxes, for commuting costs associated with qualified transportation, such as mass-transit and vanpools. The recently enacted Stimulus Bill, effective March 1, 2009, directs National Capital Area Federal Departments
and Agencies to provide up to $230 per month to their employees as a transportation subsidy. The amount of the subsidy depends on each individual employee's actual commuting expenses for subway, bus and vanpool related costs. Employees who use a combination of these commuting methods, such as taking a metro bus to a subway, could add the combined costs up to $230 per month for reimbursement by the newly approved transit subsidy limit. Outside the National Capital Area, availability of Commuter Choice and other incentives varies by federal agency although many also offer up to the maximum benefit to their employees anywhere in the country. The AFGE Commuter Benefits Program provides several options. An AFGE member could contact VPSI and provide information about the location of his/her home workplace destination, and VPSI determines if there may be an existing vanpool that would suit the needs of the AFGE member. If so, the AFGE member can then join the existing vanpool, and contact his/her agency representatives to determine
the exact amount that their agency would reimburse. If there aren’t existing vanpools to serve the AFGE member, another option would be the creation of a new vanpool that could serve AFGE members. VPSI supplies the vans and the logistical support, including insurance, vehicle maintenance, etc. The van is leased to a vanpool member-driver. The driver calculates the monthly expenses, and the vanpool riders divide the costs amongst the group. In most cases, vanpool participants are eligible to receive a transit subsidy up to $230 per month from their Department or Agency. If you are a federal employee member of AFGE or considering membership in AFGE and would like to know more about the AFGE Commuter Benefit Program, please visit the AFGE member benefits page at www.AFGE.org and click on “Your Career”. Or, call 1-877-VAN-VPSI (826-8774).
Announcing the Van-Pools.com iPhone Giveaway Contest Now that we’ve established our new www.van-pools.com blog, we need your help to fill it with interesting and exciting submissions about your experiences commuting to work. These stories can be about anything you choose, as long as it is related to vanpooling. Maybe you’ve had something extraordinary happen to you on a VPSI vanpool. Or, maybe you want to
share how much money vanpooling has saved you over the years. If you have a story to submit, simply go to www.van-pools.com/contest. Be sure to include your name, phone number and mailing address. As a way of saying ‘Thank you’, we will accept entries between July 15 and August 14 and we will give away two iPhone 3G gift cards, each redeemable for a 16 GB Apple iPhone 3G S. We will select the four to six best story submissions, and then place a poll on Van-Pools.com, allowing blog visitors to vote for their favorite story. All of the finalist stories will be posted. The top two winners will each receive the prize.
Note: The iPhone 3G Gift Card can also be used for all things Mac and iPod at the Apple Online Store or any Apple Retail Store. In addition, we will send out a VPSI Mouse Pad to the first 25 people who enter the contest. And if your story is selected to be posted onto the Van-Pools.com blog page, we will send you a VPSI 12 pack pop cooler!
VPSI Commuter Chronicle - Summer 2009
John Miranda Receives NASA Honor Award VPSI joins NASA in congratulating John Miranda as a recipient of the prestigious Exceptional Service Medal, awarded in “recognition of exceptional performance and outstanding contributions to a highly successful employee Rideshare Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory [Pasadena, CA]. This award is given to carefully selected individuals who have distinguished themselves by making outstanding contributions to the NASA mission.” Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a well known, respected leader in the southern California rideshare community and is served by VPSI’s Chatsworth, CA office. In addition, John will be celebrating thirty years of service in July 2009. Congratulations John!
(L to R) Wendy Kim, Account Executive-Chatsworth; John Miranda, JPL-Rideshare Manager and Jackie Carter, Manager-Chatsworth
Presenting the award to John are Dr. Elachi, Director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (left) and Mr. Ed Weiler, NASA official (right).
Transportation News That Moves You Cork, Ireland Not only is vanpooling a great way to commute to work, but it also helps the environment and reduces traffic congestion by reducing the number of single-occupant vehicles on our roads. Every day as we commute to work, it’s easy to see the vast numbers of people driving alone. A person’s transportation requirements are often spontaneous and immediate, not always compatible with rigid timetables. Avego Shared Transport recognizes this by dynamically matching vacant seats in private vehicles with requests for transport in real-time. Riders are instantly matched with drivers
traveling the same route at the same time, and the costs of the journey are automatically and fairly apportioned. This innovative approach enables more flexibility in how people can use ridesharing services. Imagine if you could fill up any vacant seats in your van by picking up people along the route you are traveling, without having to arrange everything long in advance. “We want more people to be able to avail of all of the clear benefits that vanpools have to offer,” said Avego’s Managing Director, Sean O’Sullivan. “With worsening traffic problems on our roads, uncertainty of oil supplies, and global warming, there needs to be an alternative to the single-occupant vehicle that is flexible enough to be attractive to every commuter. By making it easier to fill up all the empty seats in private vehicles, we can extend the reach of the public transit network to every road, to suit every commute.” As the application uses iPhone GPS technology to record a vehicle's move-
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Creativity (continued) FH - Inclusiveness, emphasis on employees first (here is a shocker...not the customer first), flat and learning organizations and low risk environments. VPSI - Where do you see the greatest opportunities for innovation? FH - Follow the Government stimulus money. That’s who needs it the worst. VPSI - Why do some companies refuse to embrace change and innovation while others thrive on creatively reinventing themselves? FH - Apple, Google, Toyota, VPSI and companies who are constantly open and learning are going to be the survivors. VPSI - You recently participated in VPSI’s annual Managers’ Meeting training and had an opportunity to share your insights on “organic innovation”. Where do you see opportunities for implementing creative ideas within VPSI? FH - It’s not where I see the opportunities, it’s where the experts - the employees - see the opportunities that will determine VPSI’s innovation success. The answers will come from within…they will be organic. I think VPSI will succeed by driving Organic Innovation deeper in the company. In fact I am working on an idea to help that happen right now!
ments, it’s possible for riders to receive real-time information about departure and arrival times. Drivers can also access detailed journey history information, such as passenger miles driven. VPSI has been working with Avego to explore the possibility of using shared transport capabilities in VPSI's vans. Let us know if you'd like to see something like this in your vanpool program! To learn more about Avego Shared Transport, visit www.avego.com.
