Commute Another Way Week starts Monday.

People who give their cars a rest and bike, walk or ride the bus to work will once again be rewarded with free T-shirts and prizes.

But Matt Sargent and his friends couldn’t wait for the prizes. Not with gas prices shooting up 71 cents per gallon in the past year – 37 cents in the past month alone.

“I was spending $120 a week” just driving to and from work, Sargent said.

So Sargent and two buddies did what a lot of Mainers may finally be ready to do, now that a gallon of gas costs $3.70. They changed their driving habits.

Sargent, Tim Reynolds and Kevin Mabry all live in the Lewiston-Auburn region and work in Portland renovating a downtown office building.

As gas prices rose last winter, Reynolds and Mabry started sharing rides in Mabry’s pickup. But none of the guys had a vehicle that got better than 20 m.p.g., or had enough seats to carry all three of them.

Sargent decided he’d had enough about a month ago and paid $1,000 for a 1993 Saturn with 187,000 miles. The three men have been carpooling daily in the 30-m.p.g. car. Sargent pays for maintenance on the car while Reynolds and Mabry split the cost of gas – each spending about $25 a week.

“Imagine all the combined money we were spending,” Sargent said. Not to mention all the gasoline they were burning.

Mainers drive more miles than the average American – usually alone – and we have less efficient vehicles. Not only has that left us especially exposed to the price spikes, it has made our cars and trucks the state’s number one contributor to global warming.

Those are the reasons behind the annual Commute Another Way event, and why it expanded from one day to five last year.

Each day next week has a special theme. Tuesday, for example, is “Transit Tuesday” and bus services around the region are offering free rides.
The desire to save the earth is still fueling interest, said Carey Kish, coordinator of Commute Another Way Week and program manager of the non-profit Go Maine program. But it’s clear that gasoline prices are having a big effect this year.

As of Friday afternoon, about 6,400 Mainers pledged to leave their cars at home at least one day next week, well above the 5,000 registrations received in an average year, he said.

“We’re getting registrations from far and wide, more so than ever,” Kish said.
GoMaine also is seeing dramatic growth in the number of people who use its Web-site to join van pools and carpools, and in the number of bike commuters.

Kish said the financial pain caused by high gas prices also is lending a more sober atmosphere to the event this year. “It’s crisis mode, really,” he said.
Matt Sargent and his buddies found a way out of the crisis, for now. And they expect other people to change their habits, too.

“People are pinching pennies,” said Mabry, who remembers when filling his gas tank didn’t turn his stomach. “Now when you get gas you’ve got to pull out your wallet to see how much money you have.”

It’s never been a better time to try another way.

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