Cool transportation solutions are available to any organization! Last month Cool Davis officially joined Yolo Commute, our local Transportation Management Association. Yolo Commute is dedicated to helping all kinds of organizations manage their transportation options for employees and members while reducing single occupancy vehicle use and enhancing mobility options in our community! They employ Transportation Demand Management strategies to achieve regional and member transportation goals.

Cool Davis is starting with Yolo Commute as a small organization, covering staff and our Sacramento Valley College Corps fellows under one subscription. All kinds of organizations can belong: businesses, non-profits, HOAs, and multifamily apartments, to list a few.

Benefits for Cool Davis staff and fellows include:

  • Trip and rideshare incentives
  • Discount transit passes
  • Guaranteed Ride Home
  • May is Bike Month prizes and incentives
  • E-bike loan program
  • HMP – E-moped discount
  • Cycling Savvy Education program
  • SPIN quarterly pass

Join Yolo Commute and get a super personal introduction like we did at Cool Davis last month. Yolo Commute staff Brenda Lomeli, Hayary Torres, and Sophia Linnevers are ready to help! Check out the new Yolobus Beeline Service, too!

Watch a short video presentation of all your options by Brian Abbanat, Yolo Commute Director with the Yolo Transit District, at timestamp 11:18, on the @LiveCoolDavis YouTube channel, from our recent Annual Partner Event in December.

Key Links

Check out low price Yolo Commute subscriptions and super incentives by clicking below!

Join Yolo Commute

Yolo Commute Incentives and Programs

Image courtesy Cycling Promotion Fund of Australia. Left shows the physical size of a group of people riding on a bus. Middle shows if that same number of people rode bikes in comparison. Rights shows that same number of people in cars, again in comparison with  the space occupied if on a bus.

Q&A with Yolo Commute

How can I get on board?

Embracing new transportation options can sometimes feel a little like the chicken and the egg. It may be hard to walk to work because there is no safe walking route. Or you may need to drop your child off at school on the way to work and there is no bus route that can quickly accomplish both.

You can start small by testing out different modes of transportation when you have the time. Test out taking the bus to the movies or take a walk around your neighborhood. Once you feel comfortable with that mode, try taking it to work! (This will qualify you for our TRIP Incentive program!)

What is Yolo Commute?

Yolo Commute is a non-profit organization known as a transportation management association, or TMA. We were founded in 1994 and consist of 14 member-organizations whose dues fund our programs. Yolo Commute is staffed through a contract with Yolo Transportation District, though the two are distinct entities. Yolo Commute is led by a board of directors, who guide our work.

How does a Transportation Management Association work?

TMAs are usually collaborations between private businesses and organizations and public groups such as agencies, districts, or government. A TMA’s common purpose is to reduce the number of people who drive alone to work and provide or promote faster, cheaper, more convenient, and more sustainable alternatives.

Sometimes, TMAs provide actual transportation services such as Emery Go-Round, a shuttle in Emeryville, California in the Bay Area that takes commuters “the last mile” from the BART station to their place of work. Other TMAs focus more on incentive programs, just like Yolo Commute, to motivate people to take alternative forms of transportation to work.

TMAs can also provide other services, such as advocacy for sustainable transportation and development, or providing a way for large development or transportation projects to reduce their environmental impact by partnering with them to provide services and incentives to their residents/workers.

Yolo Commute and other TMAs employ transportation demand management (TDM) strategies to make our work as effective as possible.

What are transportation demand management (TDM) strategies?

TMA and TDM are two very similar acronyms, so they are easy to mix up.

A good way to remember the difference is that TMA is what Yolo Commute is, and TDM is what Yolo Commute does: Transportation Demand Management.

TDM strategies are also sometimes referred to as “mobility solutions,” “mobility management,” or even “travel choice,” but they all point to the same thing.

TDM is a planning term that refers to ways that people can travel to increase efficiency and reduce congestion and its negative side effects. In other words, TDM takes the strain off of existing infrastructure like roads and parking by distributing trips across many different modes of transportation. TDM deals with the demand side of transportation as opposed to the supply side. When people walk, work from home, bike, or take the bus, fewer people are driving, and demand for road and parking space is reduced.

Over time, each person using an alternative transportation mode adds up to big changes in the mobility landscape.

With more people riding transit, service may become better funded and more efficient. Cities and counties may invest in more bike lanes and trails. Governments may pass pedestrian safety laws. Communities may even visually change, with compact, mixed-income housing developments supporting many transportation modes constructed closer to work, school, and errands.