The Klaxit carpooling application had been somewhat neglected with the Covid-19 health crisis and social distancing instructions. In this new school year, the elected officials of the community of communes Porte de DrômArdèche around Saint-Vallier are relaunching its promotion: “It meets a triple objective” argues Pierre Jouvet, the president of the intercommunality, “trying to save money for our inhabitants, by enhancing their purchasing power with less individual journeys; fighting global warming because traveling with 4 people in a car rather than alone to go to work is good for the planet; and then unclog our roads because we have an increase in population.”
The Porte de DrômArdèche community of municipalities supports the system financially: the passenger pays nothing, and the driver is compensated 2 euros per trip (4 euros when the trip exceeds 40 kilometres). Today, 200 people regularly use the application. The elected officials hope to reach 1,000 active carpoolers.
An argument to help companies recruit?
About twenty companies are promoting the Klaxit application to their employees. The more they will be to use it, the more likely they will be to find routes to share. Claudie Patouillard-Curtil, human resources manager at Revol in Saint-Uze also sees this as an argument for recruiting: “a large part of recruitment is slowed down by a salary part, but indirectly it is linked to distance. The cost today of a full tank of gas makes it much less easy to go to work more than 10 kilometers from at home in the industry. So Klaxit can be an answer to this problem.”
In May, when gasoline exceeded 2 euros per liter, the Klaxit application was widely used. But the goal is for carpooling to be regular, that it doesn’t fluctuate like prices at the pump.