About

RIDE Solutions is a regional sustainable transportation program operated by the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission in cooperation with the New River Valley Planning District Commission. It is a grant-funded program that provides free carpool matching and commute options services for citizens of the Roanoke and New River Valley regions and surrounding areas within southwestern Virginia.  We work with individuals to connect them to the best transportation option for their situation.

In formal terms, RIDE Solutions is a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) agency – that is, we address issues such as traffic and air quality related to vehicle emissions from the demand side.  Rather than build a new highway to handle more cars and thus ease the flow of traffic, TDM seeks to encourage behavior that takes cars off the road – carpooling, vanpooling, public transit, bicycling, walking, and telecommuting.  Behaviour is the key word here – while there are important infrastructure elements that need to be in place (like park-and-rides, transit routes and schedules that make sense, safe bike and pedestrian accommodations, and so forth), none of this makes a difference if people don’t use them.  Through incentives, education, and encouragement, RIDE Solutions connects people to these options.

Though TDM is not a new discipline, it has taken on greater significance in the last several years as energy consumption and environmental stewardship have intersected in an age of climate change.  TDM addresses a number of core issues regarding the energy crisis:

• Reduce the energy consumed in our transportation system by taking vehicles off the road and moving people into more efficient modes.  TDM concentrates on transportation systems that move people, not cars.
• Reduce the energy and materials consumed in the expansion of the physical transportation system.  Dealing with traffic and air quality challenges by reducing transportation demand also eliminates the need to add more highway miles to our road system.
• First maintain, and then grow, green and natural space by reducing growth of transportation infrastructure and encouraging density and smart growth.  The fast few decades of suburban sprawl have been a lesson in what not to do – more than move people into more sustainable modes, TDM ultimately encourages living patters that get people closer to their destinations so that walking, bicycling, and transit become viable and economical options.  The Roanoke and New River Valleys are known for the beautiful mountains that surround us and are valued for quick access to natural surroundings.  RIDE Solutions works to keep it that way.

It is worth emphasizing that RIDE Solutions is about choice – though we fully believe that most people, once they experience the cost savings and quality of life improvements that can achieve by taking advantage of transportation options, will not want to go back, we recognize that this won’t be the case for everyone.  We also feel, though, that by connecting people to their options everyone benefits – every person in a carpool, on a bike or in a bus, is one less car on the road and one less way to snarl your commute if you choose to drive alone.