A 'BlaBlaCar' for college

The URJC is the first university in Madrid to implement an environmentally aware mobility system through car sharing. It is a new measure eco-friendly which consists of sharing a vehicle on the journeys that the members of the university community make daily.

Oihane Colodron Sanchez

Thanks to an agreement signed with the Valencian company Journify, university students will save money and reduce pollution. The Rey Juan Carlos University has nearly 50.000 students, 2.000 teachers and 650 administration and service workers. Although many use public transport, there are a large number of people who choose to travel by their own means. According to the European Environment Agency, daily private transport causes almost 15% of today's pollution. Almost 10.000 people have died prematurely from polluting fuel emissions so far this century. This figure can be reduced if instead of using five cars for five people, just one is used.

According to a probabilistic study based on the behavior of users on the platform and the origins of students to the different campuses, the expected impact is to benefit more than 27.000 people, saving 45.000 tons of CO2 per year, thus reducing one of the main causes of the carbon footprint.

This agreement is part of the university's innovation and sustainability strategy to promote efficient mobility with numerous benefits such as: reducing pollution levels, freeing up parking spaces, reducing the use of private vehicles, facilitating travel between the 5 campuses that the university has in Alcorcón, Aranjuez, Madrid, Móstoles and Fuenlabrada and reduce traffic jams.

The initiative will be implemented through the 'Journify' app, which allows the university community to connect with each other, facilitating the work of the carpooling (share the car). In it, drivers can save on the costs derived from their daily journeys by establishing their round trip routines to campus based on their schedules and passengers can book, in a simple step, the journeys that best suit them at a price very competitive thanks to the practice of the collaborative economy.

“Offering this new service allows us to provide the university with a tool eco-friendly that connects all our campuses, providing a greater capillarity of access routes to take advantage of the routes of the university community itself, without having to disburse our own fleets”, highlights Juan Antonio Melero, vice-rector for Innovation and Transfer. It is an example of public-private collaboration that is complemented by the existing public transport routes that connect the university.

In addition, this alternative has other advantages. The company itself states that "users who share a car with their colleagues on a daily basis are more punctual, feel more committed, create internal ties and are more productive".

The implementation of the system is scheduled for the month of May, with the aim of starting to spread the application and making the university community aware of the benefits that the use of this system entails. The app is expected to be fully operational by the start of the next academic year.