Every year, we burn the equivalent of 9 billion gallons of gas stuck in traffic jams, congestion that is most common during the morning and afternoon commuting times. Over time, this number has gone nowhere but up. In addition to wasted fuel, employees also spend enormous amounts of time in their vehicles—about 47 hours each and every year. That’s a lot of wasted energy, talent, and time.

Studies show that when employees have a choice about their commuting schedule and support for choosing less stressful methods of getting to work, they are more satisfied with their jobs and more productive, too. Helping your employees make greener commuting choices is not only good for their health and good for your bottom line, it can also improve your green reputation.

• Take public transit instead of driving to work and you could cut your transportation costs by $8,000 annually.
• Opt to carpool with a fellow co-worker one day every week to shave $339 from your commute every year.
• Join a car share program and realize up to $6,500 in savings every year over owning and maintaining your own vehicle.
• Choose to telecommute to work just one day every week to reduce your gasoline costs by $1,000 every year.
• A compressed workweek schedule (four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days) will give you a long weekend, cut your commute expenses by 20 percent, and could save you $500 annually.
• Instead of driving a car to work, choose a power-assisted bicycle, such as the Avanti Electra,Schwinn’s Streamline, and the Stokemonkey. These generally have a range between 40 and 50 miles, can go between 14 and 30 mph, and can pay for themselves in as little as a few months in gas savings.
• Have your employees stay at Green Seal Certified hotels to ensure your company supports hotels that opt for products are in the top 25 percent in terms of efficiency.
• Both car and air travel are heavy polluting activities for getting to meetings and conferences. Choose to teleconference and you could cut your air travel significantly. Vodafone now requires that all employees justify their travel, a move that has saved the company 20 percent in just one year.
• Help employees carpool to work by offering incentives to those who do. This will save you money, too, since it costs between $2,000 and $5,000 to build a single-surface parking spot, and $10,000-$12,000 to build one spot in a three-story structure. Reducing the number of spots you need by encouraging carpooling can cut these expenses significantly.
• Parking stalls must be maintained at a cost of about 1.5 percent of the initial investment. Reduce the number of parking stalls you need and your maintenance costs, too by offering facilities to employees who bike, walk, or run to work. Divert five parking stalls from cars to facilities for bikers, a company could save anywhere between $10,000 and $60,000 annually.
• If every US commuter car carried just one more person to work every day, we’d save 8 billion gallons of gasoline.