Behavioral Nudges and Incentives

Offers customized Commuter Benefits programs with pre-tax subsidies to businesses and commuters in New York City’s five boroughs, supporting cost-effective and sustainable commuting options.

Provides an online savings calculator to help individuals estimate financial benefits from carpooling and ride-sharing, including savings on gas, tolls, parking, and vehicle maintenance.

Provides personalized, door-to-door mass transit route planning with detailed itineraries, including transfers, schedules, and travel times for bus, train, subway, and ferry. Offers access to up-to-date transit maps and schedules and delivers services upon request to individuals and employers.

Offers a Guaranteed Ride Home benefit that reimburses registered carpool and vanpool participants for alternative transportation in emergencies, when working late, or when their ride is missed. Covers up to $40 per trip and $200 annually for rides to essential locations such as train stations, daycare facilities, and medical centers.

Provides information and support to individuals interested in telecommuting and promotes carpooling, vanpooling, and public transportation to reduce commuting stress, costs, and environmental impact.

Operates an online ridematching service that connects commuters based on home location, work location, and work schedule preferences to facilitate carpooling and vanpooling. The service enables individuals to join carpools or vanpools as passengers and supports the formation of new vanpools through rider matching, outreach, and recruitment.

Facilitates vanpool formation by managing lease coordination and providing an Empty Seat Subsidy that covers fare shortfalls for up to three months when a rider leaves. Offers drivers free use of vanpool vehicles during off-hours and weekends as an incentive, while requiring them to maintain vehicles and logs.

Advocates for the preservation and development of working waterfronts in small to mid-sized ports across the Hudson Valley, NY Harbor, Canals, and the Atlantic Coast.

Offers practical training programs and workshops in partnership with organizations, covering skills such as sailmaking, cargo handling, boatbuilding, and climate-adapted port design, with delivery planned starting in 2024.

Conducts consulting practicum projects with sustainable businesses in Vermont, the U.S., and internationally to support post-carbon logistics.

Designs and prototypes intermodal cargo containers for regional zero-emission transport, including a pallet-based prototype developed with University of Vermont engineering students, with plans to release the design as an open-source hardware standard under a Creative Commons license for global adaptation.

Organizes regional, national, and international conferences focused on sustainable logistics, traditional skills, and sail freight to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Conducts and publishes research to advance near-zero-emission coastal maritime trade, including the Sail Freight Business Handbook and peer-reviewed papers on green shipping presented at the SISDO Conference.

Provides technical and financial support for maritime education initiatives and public exhibits, including assistance to the Hudson River Maritime Museum’s "The New Age of Sail" exhibit and the Schooner Apollonia’s 2024 cargo voyage.

Administers commuter mobility programs for approximately 300 companies, providing consulting and implementation support for over twenty years, including customized commute mobility plans, identification of commute options, program strategies, and ongoing evaluation and consultation.

Provides commuter services in collaboration with the New York State Department of Transportation, including program delivery and research initiatives to support transportation demand management.

Conducts research on transportation demand management, including a commuter services branding survey for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council and a survey of single-occupancy commuters to assess program appeal and incentives for mode shift.

Provides employers with promotional materials on ridesharing, transit, and commute cost comparisons, and supports on-site events to promote commute services; also develops custom promotional materials tailored to employer needs.