Thumbs up to the people who are choosing Metro’s vanpools as a way to make their daily commutes, making life on the highways a little easier and the environment a little healthier for everybody else.

According to Metro, its vanpool program – reputedly the oldest and largest of its kind in the United States – removes about 5,000 cars from the roads each day and eliminates approximately 16,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. That’s something to think about the next time you’re plowing through heavy traffic: It could be worse without vanpools, not to mention all the other mass-transit options available through Metro and its big regional sister, Sound Transit.

Some of the heaviest ridership in vanpools hails from the southeast portion of King County. One of the happy riders is Lin Chen, who commutes with six co-workers to their jobs in Enumclaw. Why does she do it? Well, she said in last Wednesday’s Reporter, there’s the socialization and less–tense motoring that comes with sharing rides instead of driving alone. Financially, the payoff is the roughly $125 she saves each month that otherwise would go toward gas for her own car. That makes her $27-a-month fee for vanpooling seem like a pittance – a happy one, at that.

The news isn’t all rosy from Metro. The agency hopes the County Council will approve a 25-cents fare increase for bus riders, effective Oct. 1. The additional take from riders, though relatively bite-sized, is an attempt to help offset a projected deficit of $14 million in Metro’s budget for fuel purchases this year. Higher fares won’t cover all of the difference, though – an unpleasant but necessary price for making the best out of traffic-laden highways and roads and the fiscal pain at the gas pump that citizens and transit operators are sharing.

Editor Pat Jenkins