Ridesharing has been a popular mode of travel at Hacienda for over three decades. Whether carpooling or vanpooling, routinely or on demand, finding someone to help share your commute has many advantages. National studies place the cost of driving at over $0.60 a mile based on 15,000 miles of annual travel. Sharing your ride immediately reduces this expense. In addition, shared ride vehicles travel for free in the region's ever-expanding network of express lanes with a FastTrak Flex toll tag. This means a shared ride can be a very fast and cheap alternative.

New Rideshare System

Hacienda is now introducing its own system to help facilitate ridematching exclusively between Hacienda employees and residents. A new component has been added to our website to allow employees and residents to post information about where they work and where they live, along with their work schedules, and then share this information with other employees and residents to see if a good rideshare opportunity is available.

Your Hacienda User Account

In order to participate you first need to have a current Hacienda Employee or Resident account. We invite you to create your Employee or Resident account to gain access to the many special features on our site. If you do not have an account, simply go to www.hacienda.org and select Login/Create Account at the top of any page. You will find a link underneath the login information where you can create an account. If you have an account but have not established yourself as an Employee or Resident, you may do so by going to the Edit Profile section of the Account Manager. Details on creating different accounts can be found in the Help section of our website at the following location: www.hacienda.org/help/help-accounts-employees-and-residents. Please note that all information submitted on our site is managed in conformance with our Privacy Policy: www.hacienda.org/footer/privacy-policy.

Making Commute Connections Happen

With your Employee or Resident user account created you can visit the Commuting section of the Account Manager to participate in the rideshare system. Here is how it works:

• On the Commute page, enter any missing information on your home and work profiles. Then, provide the details of your daily commute. Choose which pieces of information you wish to be visible to other Hacienda employees and residents. Finally, determine whether you want matches close to home or work, how far away they can be and whether you are interested in being a rideshare driver, rider or both. Once this is finished select 'Submit Commute Profile Changes'.

• With your commute profile information entered, you can now request commute matches based on your profile by selecting 'Search'. The Hacienda rideshare system will match you based on your physical proximity to other commuters. You will then want to check the schedules of the resulting matches to make sure that they are workable with your own. For those search results that produce a match that you wish to contact, simply select 'Request Connection' at which point the person matched will receive a note indicating your interest.

• Commuters that you are either attempting to connect with or who have accepted requests are shown in the Connections section. Once you are connected all that remains is for you to contact one another and make your ride arrangements directly. Connections can also be removed when they are no longer valid.

Creating a Successful System

The success of ridesharing is entirely based on the quality of the underlying information. In order to be successful, the system needs to have a large reservoir of data incorporated so that there are plenty of match opportunities when someone makes a request. As this is a new program and the base of data is just getting established, we hope that users will check back regularly as the system grows and the number of people interested in sharing rides increases. Toward that end, we hope that you will log in and submit your information if you are interested in participating. We further hope that you will pass this information along and help let other Hacienda employees and residents know about this new tool and encourage them to participate. Be sure to stay tuned for updates as new phases of this program are already being planned including connections to other ridesharing agencies and systems.

Additional Information

Additional information on Hacienda's Commuter Resource Center and commuting programs and benefits is available. Please refer to the contact below for details.

Contact Information

Hacienda Owners Association
4305 Hacienda Drive, Suite 330, Pleasanton, California  94588-2738
(925) 734-6500 phone     (925) 734-6501 fax
info@hacienda.org e-mail     www.hacienda.org WWW