Intro & Executive Summary
ALTRANS needed a more reliable way to manage and verify carpool participation across Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center (OMC) garages. Managing carpool commutes for a large, shift-based healthcare workforce presented unique challenges, as staff arrive and depart at all hours, carpool participation is historically difficult to verify, and existing parking and transportation demand management (TDM) programs had often operated in silos.
ALTRANS led the transformation by architecting a strategic framework that bridges the gap between HR data, parking operations, and TDM goals. By integrating the client’s daily HR files with physical parking badging data in Luum, this new system established a single source of truth for internal partners. This shift allowed for a rigorous, accountable, and transparent system for users and Luum administrators that ensures carpool benefits are reserved for verified participants, reducing administrative silos and optimizing garage capacity; ultimately encouraging and incentivizing mode shift from single occupancy vehicles to carpooling.
Background / Challenge Faced
OMC is a large urban medical campus situated in Oakland, California, with thousands of employees across clinical, administrative, and support functions. Parts of the campus operate 24/7, meaning commute patterns are far more complex than a traditional day shift employer.
Several challenges made carpool management difficult:
- Carpool participation was hard to verify. There was no method for administrators to confirm carpool participation or usage after enrollment. There was no method for participants to self-report their own carpool trips. This lack of accountability made it difficult to justify how carpool efforts were conducted.
- Badge access was limited to one badge holder vs all carpool group members.
- Parking and TDM operated independently, with little shared data or coordination.
Solution
ALTRANS re-engineered the existing carpool program by implementing a sophisticated data-sharing method with the client’s parking vendor. ALTRANS applied its tailored medical center transportation solutions to design a seamless verification system. With Luum used as a central nervous system, ALTRANS managed the various stakeholders involved to allow for a coordinated approach in the flow of information between the client and Luum, ensuring that participant records remained accurate in real-time. By pairing ALTRANS’ years of experience in commute management platforms with site knowledge, Altrans moved the program into a more rigorous, yet flexible, data-backed process:
- Introduced parking badge integration to track usage, when no tracking existed before.
- Provided carpool members with free garage parking, allowing flexibility with varied healthcare shifts.
- Integrated garage badging allowed employees to track their own carpool trips to meet carpool requirements, increasing personal accountability and administrative enforcement.
- Allowed for the sharing data between HR, Parking, and TDM that was previously inaccessible to the medical center.
Outcome / Results
By applying ALTRANS years of experience and site-specific expertise, ALTRANS staff has transformed OMC’s carpool program into a model of efficiency. For the first time, the Parking and TDM teams operate from a single, shared platform. This alignment has enhanced program enforcement.
Key outcomes include:
- Parking and TDM teams now operate from a single shared platform.
- Carpool participation is now verified daily through badge usage, when no reporting existed before.
- Designated carpool-only parking spots at locations near participants work sites.
- Instituted occasional incentives and rewards supported by badge data.
- Free parking for carpool groups that meet the monthly minimum requirements.
- Garage access for all carpool group members allows flexibility for varied participant work schedules.
Conclusion / Call to Action
Managing carpool at a major urban medical center is a complex task that traditional TDM approaches often fail to address at scale. The success of the new OMC carpool program was the direct result of strategic deployment of tools, accountability and enforcement procedures, creating a level of trust between participants and administrators with mutual visibility of carpool and parking badging data. This program demonstrates that for complex employers, effective carpool management is found through understanding site-specific employee behaviors, emphasizing human-centered strategy, and rigorous data integration. By getting the infrastructure right, ALTRANS has made every aspect of the program (from incentives to enforcement) effective and efficient. Ultimately, ALTRANS Transportation Management Association, Inc brings together the tools and the strategy to create TDM programs for the client that emphasize accountability through data gathering.