California Town Will Pay You Not To Drive Your Car

Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images)

In an effort to curb the driving habits of its citizens, the Los Angeles Country Metropolitan Transportation Authority is rolling out a new pilot program with the city of Santa Monica. It’s called the “One Car Challenge,” and the program will pay 200 residents of households that have multiple vehicles a weekly stipend to use just one of their cars, according to The Los Angeles Times.

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The program will reportedly offer payments of up to $119.80 per week for five weeks starting in November. That comes out to $599 per household, and on top of that, the city is also offering a bonus incentive — a Metro TAP card preloaded with $50, as well as five to 10 free rides on Metro Bike Share. Not too shabby.

The LA Times says the program is part of Metro’s $1.3 million Travel Rewards Research Pilot Program which is being funded by grants from the Federal Transit Administration and Duke University.

If you happen to be one of Santa Monica’s 91,000 residents and you’ve got a bunch of cars but only need to drive one, you have until October 6th to sign up on Metro’s website. It looks like this is a first come, first serve thing, so you’d better act fast if you want in. If the program is deemed a success, Metro reportedly said it could be rolled out to other parts of Los Angeles County.

On the face of it, this seems like a neat program to cut down on driving, but I’m honestly not sure just how much it’ll actually do. It doesn’t put any limits on how much driving folks do with their one car, and you can only drive so many cars at once, anyway. I suppose it remains to be seen if it’ll actually cut down on emissions. Good on LA Country for trying something, though.