Everything’s rosy for car share winner
A dedicated car sharer has won a meal for two and a bottle of champagne in a competition designed to recognise the efforts of those who team up for the daily commute.
Sallie Hall, who works as a Traffic Signals Technician for Warwickshire County Council, travels on a daily basis from Coventry into Warwick.
For the past two years she has sought out colleagues to car share into work with, and now uses the local authority’s `car sharing database’ to help track down potential sharers.
The database is designed to help county council employees to find local matches to car share with – reducing the number of cars on the road and their impact on the environment.
In a bid to encourage more people to use the database a competition was recently run, and the Rose and Crown in Warwick offered the prize of a meal for two and bottle of champagne.
Sallie said: “I was really surprised to hear I’d won, it made my day. So far I’ve shared with about ten people from Coventry, and some people it has worked with, others it hasn’t. You have to be flexible to make it work, some days you may not be able to, but I share as much as I can. I enjoy car sharing. It’s nice to have someone to chat to when you’re stuck in traffic, plus it saves me a lot on petrol and also guarantees a car parking space before 10am.”
The General Manager of the Rose and Crown, Jeremy Kynaston, said: “We’re trying to cut down on carbon emissions ourselves, so we’re very happy to be sponsoring this initiative. At the Rose and Crown, you won’t find any ingredients that have been air freighted; we’re cutting back on food miles by sourcing more British produce, and, as our own kind of carbon trading, we’re even planting a forest in Africa.”
Information on car sharing within Warwickshire County Council and advice on car sharing in general is available at http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/carshare or for general sustainable travel advice visit http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/travelwise