People of Tangshan advocate low-carbon life by "carpooling"

Commuting is hard for people due to cold weather. The buses are too slow, taking a taxi is too expensive and buying a car is not affordable, all of which lead many people to turn to sharing a car. It not only is comfortable and economical but there is also the opportunity to make new friends. The Spring Festival is approaching, so sharing a car has become a fashionable thing. However, should "carpooling," which walks the line between convenient travel and an illegal operation, be popular? On January 2, reporters investigated.

Cold weather results in a "car pool group"

On January 27 at 7:30 am, Mr. Ma, a resident from Longhua Community, left home and was about to drive his car to go to work. He drove his Hafei car to the community's gate but was not urgent to leave yet. It was rush hour at that time and the buses that were coming and going were crowded with passengers. A taxi showing "vacancy" had just come by, and people many meters away had just stared at it.

Several minutes later, a man walked out the community and directly opened the door and got into Ma's car. Then the Hafei left the community and joined the endless stream of traffic. At 8:00 am, the car arrived at and stopped in the parking lot of the Tangshan Iron and Steel Limited Corporation, and Mr. Ma and the other man talked and smiled and walked in the building.

"The other day, it was too cold and the temperature dropped to more than 20 Celsius degrees below zero. Everybody felt that commuting is too hard, even though they could drive their own car to work," Ma said, "around that time, one of my colleagues, who doesn't have a car, feels that it is not convenient to take the bus, so we discussed the issue and decided to share my car to go to work."

About one month later, the two did the calculations and found that sharing a car not only saves money and labor but also protects the environment. Ma told reporters that driving his car to work can spend him hundreds of yuan every month, and now he can save quite a bit of his prior expenses.

"Carpooling" for going home to celebrate the Spring Festival has become popular

If you search for the two Chinese characters "拼车" on the Baidu search engine, you can get 37,800,000 hits, among which a large number are about carpooling. In Tangshan Club on tieba.baidu.com, there also are many people looking for fellow travelers to go home. Among them, there are not only have people who want to go back to counties and towns from Tangshan City but also people who want to return from Tangshan City to Baoding, Tianjin and Beijing to celebrate the Spring Festival.

Posts like "I do not have a car so I want to look for someone who has a car and works in Tangshan and wants to go to Baoding. The price is negotiable," can be seen everywhere on the Tangshan Club.

"Carpooling is very fun," citizen Miss Li said, "looking for new 'people to share the car with' is like looking for new friends, and moreover, it can save me lots of money. So I think it is a bargain." Miss Li said frankly that carpooling is not complicated like what some people have said. "If the two parties hit it off, they can share a car, if not, they do not have to. You're in total control." She told reporters that now she has become good friends with people that she has shared a car with in the past.