Pinal van pool a big hit with county employees

Jerry Keely, a Pinal County administrator, suffers a four-hour commute each day he travels from his home in Tucson to Florence, the county seat. There's no getting around the fact that it's dark when the customer service administrator goes to work and dark when he gets home.

However, a van-pool program offered by Pinal County saves Keely hundreds of dollars a month and, presumably, a few bouts of road rage. Keely says he's been riding in the van pool since he began working for the county in 2006.

"It's about $65 per month for each rider," he said. How much would it cost Keely if he drove his own vehicle with today's high gas prices? "I did the math and I think I was over $500 a month just in fuel costs. That wasn't calculating the wear-and-tear costs."

The county began the van-pool program in the early 1990s for a multitude of reasons, said Marie Frazier, travel reduction coordinator for the county. It reduces emissions, helps cut down on needed parking spaces and traffic in Florence.

But one of the best parts for employees who use the program, subsidized by the county to the tune of $450,000, is that it attracts workers who don't live in Florence, or in some cases, anywhere near it.

Frazier said that a county nurse living in Arizona City - a 34-mile one-way trip to Florence - told her that "she wouldn't be working for the county if it weren't for the van pools."

The county's 29 separate van pools serve about 400 people, county officials said. That would be about 16 percent of the county's 2,500 employees. But the vans also serve employees in the state prison and federal immigration office, as well as county offices, so a precise percentage for the county is hard to come by.

The county's van-pool program has changed slightly recently based on higher gas prices and other operating fees associated with the program. Twelve of the van pools were allowed to opt out of a price-restructuring plan that would have made them responsible for a percentage of the total costs to run their van as opposed to paying a flat rate.

That's affected the program's budget. Pinal County originally planned to expand the van pool by up to 10 vans this year. One of the new planned van pools was deleted from the plan because of increasing costs, Frazier said.

But for those that have been using the program for years, the changes haven't created any bumps. Keely said that he saves money in the program, shares driving duties and makes friends with fellow employees. He said there's a camaraderie among the people he rides with and because of their two-hour commute each way, they have even earned a moniker.

"I'm one of the farthest commuters," he said. "Me and some of the people on my van pool are the commuting commandos."

He said he doesn't have Web access on the drive, but can send and receive work e-mails to get a jump-start on the workday. Keely also works on a flexible schedule that allows him to work nine, nine-hour days - so that he gets a day off from the commute every other week.

The van pool also received positive reviews from Anu Jain, an air-quality permit engineer for the county, who has been participating in the program since 2002.

The Chandler resident meets up with the van at Wal-Mart near Loop 202 and Arizona Avenue, saving her an 84-mile round trip each day. She says that the van pool beats driving to work every day.

"I try to get in touch with the world - I read newspapers, I get sleep," she said.

Jain said the program was an incentive for her to take the job as a permit engineer.

"I would say it did help me," she said. "We're not talking a few miles. It's a long way each day."