Colleagues make the commute together

By JUNE RICH
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

	J. R. Frazier, an electrical engineer at Raytheon, drives a 15-seat vanpool from Oxnard to Goleta every day.

Riding in J. R. Frazier's van is a lot like flying.

You get your own cushy seat, and it reclines. Each passenger has an individual reading light — it's dark as you fly past Mussel Shoals through Summerland into the pinkening sky of Goleta.

And you can read, sleep, work or zone out as if you were on a plane, except you're not — you're on the 101.

Every morning, Mr. Frazier, a Raytheon engineer, sets out from an Oxnard Sav-on at 5:20 a.m. He meets some colleagues there — all 14 of his riders are employees with the defense contractor — and picks up the remainder at the Ventura government center, where parking is free.

The group punches in by 6:30 a.m., and leaves by 4 p.m.

They may not beat the traffic on the way home, but they do beat the teeth-gnashing bump-and-grind that comes with it.

"I was a wreck, thoroughly destroyed by the time I got home," said van-pooler Bob Cabello, 62, who did the drive for 10 years. "Being older, I tolerate a lot less: the crazy drivers, the speeding, the hogging the lane. I was ready for the funny farm."

Then Mr. Cabello one day tried a free ride (if there's space, Mr. Frazier offers two free rides to anyone interested).

"I was sold. I slept the entire time. I sleep!" he said. "I think it saved my marriage, in retrospect."

Mr. Frazier, 40, started the vanpool about two years ago. The husky Oxnard resident had just retired from the Navy and found a job at Raytheon. He drove alone for about a week before deciding the commute was for the birds.

"I decided there had to be a better way," he said. "I was putting all these miles on my car."

He talked to fellow commuters who were sick of the drive, to his bosses, to Traffic Solutions, the county's alternative transportation agency and eventually to Enterprise Rent-A-Car. He found a deal he couldn't refuse.

Enterprise rented him his white Chevy Express for $1,170 a month. The rental company covers any repairs or maintenance and provides a replacement vehicle until the problem is solved. If Mr. Frazier wants to drop the contract altogether, he just has to give Enterprise one month's notice.

Raytheon chipped in with the guarantee of a company car for any van-pooler with a family emergency, and a subsidy for each rider, whittling down the average cost from about $110 per month to around $65. If someone quits, Raytheon helps out until another rider is found, paying the cost of the empty seat for one month, for up to 10 riders per year.

Traffic Solutions helped fill the occasional vacancy, searching its database for likely matches and advertising the openings on its Web site and in its newsletter.

Mr. Frazier shares the driving with two other regulars; as a passenger, he's been able to read the owner's manuals for all of his appliances and even a book or two.

The Raytheon vanpool is one of 24 in the county, up from 13 a decade ago. Seventeen vanpools travel from North to South County, and seven commute from Ventura County to the Santa Barbara region. They seat anywhere from 8-15 people and are rented locally by two companies, Enterprise and Vanpool Services, Inc., or VPSI, an international company.

Traffic Solutions says the best vanpools spring up at the workplace because people know each other and often share similar schedules. The agency's incentive programs, like the $3,600 grant to any new vanpool, are set up to mitigate some of the hassles of taking on a van lease.

The lead person has to drive, collect fees — often in a new bank account — and arrange maintenance and repairs, or enlist others in the vanpool to help with those duties.

"We're trying to erase the fear of being stranded with the entire cost of this vanpool formation," said Erika Lindemann, with Traffic Solutions. "If after six months it doesn't work, the vanpool just folds. We're trying to convince people that this isn't a risky endeavor. Once they're on the road, they're quite successful."

VANPOOL FAST FACTS

Best candidate: Person who commutes at least 40 miles round-trip, works regular hours and doesn't need vehicle at work, or who can use the company car in a pinch.

Best advantage: Takes you directly to work.

Drawbacks: One person has to take on the van lease. Some don't like the close quarters when the van is full.

Cost: $110-130 each month per person

Incentives: Traffic Solutions will help set up vanpools, refer interested commuters to ones that already exist, or advertise vanpool vacancies on its Web site and in its newsletter. A new-rider rebate program gives $100 to a new rider after the third month. The agency's start-up program gives $3,600 to any new vanpool, a savings shared by the riders.

Information: Call 963-SAVE