Lanark Commuters

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is this a carpool website?
  • 
    Yes, but it is more. Carpooling, by the strictest of definitions, is one in which each person in the pool takes turns driving their own vehicle. Using the same vehicle, or indeed the same driver, every single time is not a carpool. In fact, insurance companies view this more of a taxi service which means you should be paying a different (maybe higher) premium, and you may not be covered in the event of an accident.
    
    However, Lanark Commuters doesn't make this kind of distinction. It's mandate is simply to offer a forum where fellow commuters can get together and make commuting arrangements. Hence the "C" in LC is for Commuters, not Carpoolers.
    
    

• Isn't Lanark Commuters, Community Transit Solutions and Lanark Community Transit all the same people?
  • 
    LC, CTS and LCT have a common origin, but are distinct entities. By that we mean that any decision or action performed by one of these groups is not necessarily endorsed or condoned by the others, although there is considerable communications between them. A brief history of the three may be helpful:
    
    In September of 2006, Transport Thom, the out-of-province-based company that provides a commuter service for Lanark County into Ottawa, increased their fares by 50% over a two day span. That, and the fact that they offered substandard service to begin with (vehicles which caught fire, were cold in winter and hot in summer, often late without notification, limited runs with inconvenient pickup times and frequencies, etc), was the breaking point for many of the patrons of this service. This service, which previously was cheaper in cost than driving to and parking in Ottawa, just became approximately the same in cost, but only more inconvenient. People were forced to make serious decisions about their living arrangements, job situations or commuting needs.
    
    
  • Community Transit Solutions (CTS)
    is a group which was stood up by several of these commuters. Their mandate is to lobby the local government for help and to look for alternative solutions to Thom which would be more economical, environmentally sound and which promoted more of the community. They've conducted a needs study of the community (not just of Thom bus riders, but from a larger sample), invited other municipalities to talk to council about their own successful transit models and sit on municipality committees concerning transit. Their study was well received and its implied conclusions were later made a reality: data from the needs survey revealed that given the commuters' tolerances for fares and frequency of bus use, the 50% increase in fare could equate to a 2/3 revenue loss for a transit system (click here for a copy of the survey results)...about 2 months after the study was released, Transport Thom cancelled some of their runs because they were not cost efficient.
    
    The mission of CTS is not just about replacing the current system for the current communities being serviced. Their vision is "to create a Lanark County transit system which includes a community-based management authority and private sector service provider(s) that: connects all communities, isolating no one; is affordable and accessible to all citizens; is safe and reliable; helps communities to become sustainable; and helps protect the environment."
    
    
  • Lanark County Transit (LCT)
    is an incorporation with a board whose members are composed of some CTS members (but not all) and non-CTS persons. The need for an incorporation initially arose due to the fact that there were agencies willing to fund (at least in part) feasibility studies and issues grants and loans for transit initiatives, but only to registered bodies. Because CTS is not a registered body, but simply a group of concerned citizens, they could not access this money. LCT's mandate is more focused that CTS's: they are trying to promote a privately-owned but municipally-managed bus transit system, analogous to that in Clarence-Rockland, and they work tremendously hard to show the sanity of this model to the various municipalities' politicians. Although this solution is in agreement with CTS's mandate, LCT is more focused on the business practicality of this particular model; CTS focuses more on increasing the transit need awareness for the County.
    
    
  • Lanark Commuters (LC)
    is simply a website. It has been designed by Andrew Billyard, a former member of CTS, after realizing that local politics is extremely risk-adverse and therefore moves at a speed comparable to that of plate tectonics, even though there were still commuters out there in desperate need of an alternative to Transport Thom. Andrew created Lanark Commuters to try to help the commuters with an immediate solution: not as the solution to the commuter issue but as a complementary one which can work well in conjunction with a transit solution. The philosophy behind Lanark Commuters speaks to several facets of CTS's vision.

• What is with the math quizzes?
  • 
    Because LC uses automated sign-up, it can be prone to web sniffing programs filling in the "sign up" fields and creating an army of fictitious users, draining bandwidth at the same time. Adding a math question helps prevent this from happening: if the answer is incorrect, the "sign up" application does not get submitted.

• Why should I enter more than one email address?
  
  Three main reasons:
  
  
  1. 1. By having more than one email (say home email, work email and some other) it more likely that another commuter can contact you immediately. For example, suppose passenger A finds out at noon that she needs to stay at work longer than normal and her regular driver can't hang around. Suppose she then goes onto Lanark Commuters and finds that driver B returns home much later and could be a good alternative for her for that day. Unfortunately, B only provided a home email address and so A's request does not get received by B until later that evening. Had B also provided his work email to Lanark Commuters, then B could immediately address A's request for a drive.
     
     
  2. 2. Lanark Commuters uses the emails at sign-up time to confirm the sign-up. It has happened in the past that people mis-spell their email address. If they only provide one, and it is incorrect, Lanark Commuters cannot email them to confirm their sign-up.
     
     
  3. 3. If your email address becomes inactive (you've switched email accounts, switched service providers, etc) Lanark Commuters removes that email address from your profile since you can no longer be reached at that address. If you have no email addresses left, Lanark Commuters removes your account altogether since you can no longer be reached whatsoever. Having more than one email address removes this potential risk.
  
  Again, it is important to note that Lanark Commuters never reveals anyone's email address(es) to any other commuter.

• I have nothing to hide, why should I not disclose who I am?
  • 
    With identity theft so prevalent today on the internet, it is always a bad idea to post your real name, phone number, address, etc., on the web. Although this site is designed for Lanark County and surrounding area, the whole world can see that information.