Santa Clara County Turns to App to Increase Carpooling

Santa Clara County is trying to make carpooling cool -- or at least attractive to its employees.

Starting Monday, 17,000 county workers will be able to get a ride to and from work for just a dollar each way through the mobile app Scoop.

Scoop users sign up for a ride in the morning and evening commutes, and the firm's app then assigns them to a car pool. Anyone can use the service, but Scoop specifically contracts with cities, counties and businesses to make it easier and cheaper for employees to participate. According to Scoop's website, Santa Clara County is investing $10,000 in the partnership to subsidize the costs of employees' rides in hopes of getting cars off the road and easing congestion.

"If we can get a number of those employees to be carpooling, it will benefit not only them but the environment and our roads and freeways," said Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager. He said participation in the county's current ride-share program had dropped so low that they stopped keeping track.

"If we have great success [with Scoop], then I think you'll find the old standard way of doing carpooling is going to get a little more outdated and people will want to go with this high-tech option that is now available," Yeager said.

Scoop co-founder and CEO Rob Sadow said the company has been operating a similar partnership with the city of Palo Alto since April, which has exceeded expectations, and more Peninsula cities will be joining in the coming weeks. Scoop has similar deals with several Bay Area companies, including Tesla, Twitter and Cisco.

According to Scoop's website, all rides cost passengers less than $10, meaning the county's $10,000 investment could pay for hundreds of round-trip commutes.

"It's a relatively modest investment at the county level or the employer level to drive what potentially can be a huge impact on quality of life both for residents and commuters within that particular geography," Sadow said.

Even in an increasingly crowded market that includes startups like Waze and Carma, Sadow said it's still a challenge to get people to carpool.

"It's the incumbent behavior of driving alone that we focus the most energy and time on in terms of how do we solve that problem," he said.

Yeager said the county will closely track how many employees use the program to see if it should be continued after the pilot year.