Workplace travel planning

Car sharing - also known as lift-sharing, carpooling or ride-sharing - is when two or more people arrange to share a car journey. Car sharing can help your employees and your business cut back on car use, for both commuter journeys and business-related travel. This saves your staff money and helps to cut congestion and pollution in Northern Ireland.

Informal car sharing, where employees share with colleagues, neighbours or family members has always been a crucial part of NI's transport system. This is usually supported by notice boards in business premises which are a good place for employees to find colleagues looking to share journeys. The growth of the internet has seen the development of a more widespread use of car sharing supported by online notice boards which can help staff to find car sharing matches both inside and outside the business.

There are two main types of car sharing:

• Open car sharing - where anyone in a defined geographical area can join a sharing scheme. This involves no input from the employer, and is likely to be most appropriate for small businesses if the staff don't live near each other.
• Closed car sharing - where a business sets up an in-house car-matching scheme.

You can find out more about car sharing and join local schemes with Liftshare.

Car sharing in NI is encouraged by the Department for Infrastructure with dedicated 'Park and Share' car parks at key road junctions. These act as meet-up points for sharers - find more information on Park and Share sites.