other alternatives that can make your daily trips cheaper and more environmentally friendly. One such option is carpooling -- simply finding others who have a similar commute and offering to ride with them.
Because you can split fuel costs and cut your emissions per person, carpooling is a great way to cut down on expenses and feel good about reducing your personal environmental impact.
The challenge to carpooling is that you need to not only find others who have a similar commute but are also on a similar working schedule. Adapting your commute to a bus or train schedule is difficult enough for some people, but to rely on coordinating a ride with one or two other people can be extremely restricting.
If you're flexible and only need a car occasionally, you can avoid the hefty costs of buying and maintaining a vehicle with a process known as car sharing. Zipcar and Flexcar are both popular car-sharing companies that allow you to reserve a vehicle and borrow it. The system is perfect for short-term sharing, because fees can be on an hourly or daily basis