Below are some suggestions on making your business more sustainable.
Important Changes
Provide employees with general information regarding alternative transportation options including bike and bus route maps and actively promote both programs to employees.
Designate an employee who will act as the point of contact for the following opportunities: manage alternative commute programs and to disseminate alternative transportation information to the office at large.
Encourage conference calls and phone meetings rather than in-person meetings to reduce travel time and auto use.
Make commuter ride sharing information available to all employees and encourage the use of ride sharing within your business.
Commit your business to joining an alternative transportation campaign to minimize vehicle impact. Ensure that some form of bike parking is provided close to the entrance of your business.
Equipment Changes
Provide a fleet of bicycles for company employees to use.
Use GPS to manage fleet routes.
As needed, purchase new fleet vehicles and equipment that are highly fuel-efficient, use alternative fuels, or electricity, allowing flexibility for maintenance, safety, and other special use vehicles.
Provide a shuttle to nearest transit hub.
Facilities Change
Provide bicycle-support facilities, such as secure bicycle parking, personal lockers, showers, and water refill stations.
Create safe, convenient, and attractive bicycle parking, including covered and well-lit spaces and customer bicycle racks.
Provide preferential parking to customers who use carpools/vanpools, hybrids, and or alternative fuel vehicles.
Provide park and ride parking spaces.
Practice Changes
Provide incentives for employees to commute in modes other than single-occupant vehicles. Examples may include: subsidize transit passes for residents and employees and provide carpool incentives.
Offer alternative and/or flexible work schedules to employees to reduce commute time. An example may include: allowing employees to shorten their work week by working longer hours each day.
Offer employees the option of "flexing" their arrival/departure times and expand work at home programs to reduce the demand for office space and parking facilitates.
Reduce vehicle commute trips and emissions by offering employees the option of "cashing out" their subsidized parking space and utilizing transit, biking, walking or carpooling for travel to work.
Choose to work with other businesses that use sustainable transportation.
Enact a policy to minimize vehicle idling.
Plan work trips in advance so that a single trip rather than multiple trips are required to complete the same task(s).
Encourage bicycling to work by offering rebates on bicycles bought for commuting.
Provide services for employees on-site to eliminate the need for employees to have their cars at work every day.
Provide bonus vacation time for employees that commute using sustainable practices. Join the USEPA Smartway Transport Partnership. Info at http://www.epa.gov/smartway.
Enact an internal or external carbon offset program within your business.
Check tire pressure regularly and inflate to specifications monthly.
