Join the Curb Club

By Debbie Anderson, Transportation Demand Management and Outreach Specialist

Suzanne D., Ph.D., rides the bus to work almost daily. As a biostatistician for the University of Washington, research is a part of her everyday work. Finding a smarter way to work and saving money – no Ph.D. required!

Through Community Transit’s Curb the Congestion program, information about how a person’s travels impacts her community can be gleaned once that person switches from driving alone to an alternative mode of travel.

Suzanne says, “Curb the Congestion is a useful way to provide important information to Community Transit, to obtain some monetary incentives, and to get stats concerning how much you save in terms of gas, mileage and the prevention of pollutants into the environment.”

Curb the Congestion is offering great rewards for participants. Log trips on at least 8 days monthly in your online calendar and you may be eligible to receive a $50 bus or vanpool voucher, gas card or REI gift card for three consecutive months. After those initial three months, participants are eligible for a monthly $150 drawing. (Incentives are funded by Snohomish County through federal grants and developer fees.) Visit www.communitytransit.org/CurbIt for complete eligibility rules.

Participants can also recruit family, friends and co-workers and receive an additional $25 incentive, up to four times!

Curb the Congestion offers participants personal assistance in finding carpools, planning bus trips and considering other alternatives to driving alone. You can contact your personal assistant at CurbIt@commtrans.org or (425) 438-6136.

Curb the Congestion is a partnership between Community Transit and Snohomish County to reduce traffic and encourage healthy travel options on congested roadways. Curb the Congestion is funded by Snohomish County through development mitigation fees and federal grants.

The program started in 2008 after Snohomish County declared 164th Street SW between Lynnwood and Mill Creek at “ultimate capacity,” creating a program to invest in transportation demand management and safety improvements rather than halt development or try to widen already built-out roads. In 2009, the county added 128th Street south of Everett and 20th Street SE near Lake Stevens to the Curb the Congestion program.

Curb the Congestion is helping relieve the congestion on these roadways. So far in 2011, the program has removed almost 56,000 drive alone trips, reduced travel by more than 1.2 million miles and has saved participants over $196,000 in fuel costs.

If you travel on one of the targeted roads, contact the Curb the Congestion Specialist about your commute options: (425) 438-6136 or CurbIt@commtrans.org.