Carpooling and Gen Y and Gen X

Carpooling requires planning ahead. Carpooling requires having a relationship with your carpool partners. When you have a relationship, good communication is essential. Thinking about the needs of others is also fundamental to a relationship, which doesn't come naturally to younger people, namely Gen X and Gen Y. They have been raised with entitlement.

Bike commuting or taking public transit don't require relationships, planning ahead or sharing our personal space in your car. Bike commuting and public transit allow flexibility of work hours -- you can set your own schedule, a luxury most Americans live by, cherished by Gen Xers and Gen Yers. They've never known a workplace without flexible work hours.

In suburban settings -- the modern industrial park designed for the autombile era -- carpooling is typically the most viable alternative to reduce the number of cars on a road during rush hour and to improve air quality.

Yet, carpooling is the hardest "sell" to commuters over bike commuting or taking public transit.

Only about 25 percent of a typical car's mileage is for commuting. However, commuting is a regular event, so it's easier to predict and plan for. A generation ago, everyone worked the same schedules, and fewer people owned cars, so carpooling was endemic.

Today, companies often offer time, which makes carpooling much more difficult. Not only do carpoolers have to live and work near each other, they must also be on the same bio-rhythm.

And many people are not flexible about this bio-rhythm. They want to work when they want to work. They want to play when they want to play. Carpooling must fit into their schedule, even with $4/gallon gasoline.

Especially attuned to their personal needs is Generation Y, which has just entered the workforce, on the coattails of Generation X. Gen Xers and Yers have often grown up being chauffeured everywhere, so it's abhorent to even think of not having a personal vehicle at their disposal. To them, carpooling is particularly distasteful.

At least they have the technology to facilitate carpooling. E-mail and cell phones make carpooling so much easier when you're waiting for someone to show up at a meeting place, or plans change. We know Gen X and Gen Y is wired up!

To their credit, Gen Xers and Yers yearn for the city. They love the bustle, the bars, even the buses, because it means they don't have to own a car. City living is meant for pedestrians, people on the go, who like to go out. Center cities were built without cars in mind. Even outlying neighborhoods were laid out along now-defunct streetcars lines.

Cities have public transit, which Gen Xers and Yers take advantage of. When Gens Y & X have children, and buy a house, they have some hard choices that might lead them to the suburbs where the housing is bigger and schools "better."

Which might also lead them to carpooling to work, eventually.

Maybe by the time they buy houses and have children, Gen Xers and Yers will have re-aligned their priorities and be able to think about someone else; be flexible enough to adjust their schedule and share their cars. Maybe by then, our cars will be powered by greener energy. We're counting on their techno-skills to engineer solutions to the green crisis.