Northeast Transportation Connections (NETC) Information for Businesses

Traffic and congestion on I-70 is not unusual, and it’s bound to get worse before it gets better as the Central 70 project enters construction. As an employer, you may be worried about tardiness, reduced productivity, or increased stress for your employees. Perhaps you are worried that you may lose workers or have a harder time attracting high caliber candidates to your organization during construction. Or perhaps your business has expanded to the point that the parking facilities no longer accommodate all your workers. Whatever your traffic worries might be, Northeast Transportation Connections (NETC) can help you solve these problems in ways you may not have considered.

NETC employs five core strategies and a variety of supporting programs to help reduce traffic congestion.

Core Strategies

Public Transportation with RTD: Rail and bus services are offered along the corridor. RTD offers fixed-route service on a set schedule. Bike racks are available at the front of the bus and near the service doors on the commuter rail line to help commuters bike to work. NETC is currently partnering with businesses within a 10-minute walk from the corridor’s transit stations to incentivize the use of one of RTD’s three pass programs: Monthly Passes, the Flex Pass, and the EcoPass.

Active Transportation: Walking and biking are the two primary forms of active transportation but running, skating, and any non-motorized form of transportation are also options. Used in conjunction with public transportation, active transportation is a great fit for linking the workplace to the transit station. Promoting active forms of transportation may also positively impact that health of your employees and correspondingly lower the cost of health insurance premiums.

Carpool: Carpools consist of two or more people of driving age sharing a ride in a private vehicle. One of the most flexible options, NETC makes it possible for coworkers to find carpool partners. Carpooling often appeals to people traveling at least 10 miles or whose trip takes over 30 minutes. Carpoolers can reduce travel times by traveling with three coworkers to access HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) facilities and preferential parking spaces.

Vanpool: Vanpools are formalized carpools of five or more co-workers. Vanpools provide non-stop point-to-point service with one or more vanpool participants typically serving as regular drivers. The Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) pays for approximately 60 percent of the cost of vanpools, which includes the cost of maintenance, insurance, and gasoline. For businesses at specific locations, NETC will pick up the remaining costs.

Scheduling:  Flexible scheduling, compressed work-week, and a staggered work schedule are all ways to create some flexibility for your employees. Flexible scheduling allows an employee to join a carpool or utilize transit and gives them the flexibility to start work a little early or late, depending on the schedule of the transportation mode they are accessing. Recent studies by MIT have demonstrated the importance of flexible scheduling to assure the adoption of alternate forms of transportation. Compressed work-weeks allow employees to compress their work hours within the week, pay period, or month. The two most popular compressed work week schedules are the 4/40 and 9/80 programs in which employees work 40 hours in 4 days or 80 hours in 9 days. Staggered hours, by contrast, result in commute travel at non-peak hours and less congestion on metro area roads.

Telework: Telework is a program that allows employees to work at home, often one or several days a week. This results in removing a full commute trip from the roadway system.

Supporting Strategies 

 Guaranteed Ride Home: Guaranteed Ride Home (GRH) provides users who don’t drive alone with a free ride home in case of an emergency during the workday. Many people cite the fear of a family or personal emergency as a barrier to switching to transit or joining a carpool. The Denver Regional Council of Governments provides GRH for all EcoPass holders and vanpool passengers, picking them up and taking them where they need to go—for instance, their child’s school or their doctor’s office and then home afterward. They also offer a stand-alone version, which NETC can potentially help support for organizations that make a commitment to supporting carpooling, the FlexPass, or a substantial commitment to active transportation.  

 Preferential Parking: This strategy reserves the best parking spaces for employees who share a ride to work instead of driving alone.  

 Incentives: NETC has designed several incentive programs to encourage the adoption of one or more of our core strategies.  Income qualified employees who commute to businesses along the Central 70 Project are eligible for a free monthly local-fare transit pass. Businesses within a 10-minute walk of a transit station may be qualified for matching funds to offset the costs of RTD’s EcoPass. We also have financial incentives to help start carpools and vanpools. We will also provide an employee commuter survey to help NETC and the employer learn about their employees’ present commuting habits, their willingness to try other transportation modes, and the barriers that keep them from fully adopting a new mode of transportation.