Warner Center Offers Incentives for Employees to Share Rides

A Warner Center business group Thursday announced a $400,000 package of financial incentives aimed at doubling--to about 4%--the proportion of employees riding van pools to work.

Among the inducements to get workers out of single-occupant cars and into 15-passenger vans are fare subsidies and a free ride home in the event of an emergency that keeps an employee at work late or requires him or her to leave early.

The free rides home will be by taxi or rental car, said Christopher Park, manager of the Warner Center Traffic Management Organization, which is administering the program.

Also, those who have been with a van pool for 11 months will get the 12th month free under the program “to hold onto those we now have in the van pools,” Park said.

Monthly fees for van pool riders range from $52 to $65, depending on distance.

The incentive program is being financed with money from the Los Angeles City Council-created Warner Center Trust Fund.

Robert Voit, Warner Center’s major developer, was required by the council to place $5.5 million into the fund, which is controlled by the city’s Transportation Department.

Street Widening

Besides subsidizing ride-sharing, the fund is being used to widen streets and improve traffic signalization in an effort to offset the traffic impact of the center’s 35,000 employees.

The council in recent years has been requiring major developers to underwrite traffic improvements and ride-sharing programs for employees.

Of the 26,000 workers employed by the 19 firms that have formed the Traffic Management Organization, 17% car pool to work, about 2% ride van pools and 1% ride buses, Park said.

He said fewer than 1% ride bicycles or walk to work.