While CARPOOLING into work one morning last week and caught up in a construction-related delay, a visual survey of Queensway traffic yielded one irrefutable conclusion: the Commuter Challenge was a dismal failure.

For those of you not in the know, the Challenge coincided with Environment Week (June 5-11). As many as 400 local workplaces in the public and private sectors were supposedly encouraging their employees to walk, cycle, carpool or take the bus to work. The objective was to ease commuter congestion and pollution by reducing the amount of "one-person, one-vehicle" commuting.

On page three of the June 6 edition of OBJ, Daniel Spence, sustainable transportation co-ordinator at Ottawa's EnviroCentre, emphasized that one-person, one-vehicle commuting has a real and tangible impact on the local economy.

"As the economy grows, as the number of businesses and employees grow, it's going to mean more people trying to get to work. More people on the roads in their own cars will mean a lot more traffic congestion. It'll mean a lot more demand on road maintenance, a lot more wear and tear on the existing roads and greater demands for new roads to be built," Mr. Spence explained.

Simply put, neither the city nor its taxpayers can afford to build more roads for all of these cars. In many areas of the city, there simply isn't room for new or widened roads even if the money was available.

How could anyone ignore such a dire warning? Quite easily, it seems.

As a note of reference, I live in the Katimavik area of Kanata and commute to work all the way across town to the Canotek Road business park (please don't ask me how that came to be). I either take the bus or carpool with a co-worker who lives in Stittsville.

On a typical day, the commute by bus is about 55 minutes. That trip is on a 60-series express and route 95. By car, the trip (from my door) is usually under 40 minutes. In my case, it is relatively easy to argue that the car is faster and more convenient than the bus. But that's hardly the point, now is it?

I'll take the risk of assuming that most of that automobile traffic heading in from Kanata each morning is destined for downtown. It's a matter of record that an express bus can get from the Eagleson park-and-ride to downtown in 30 minutes or less thanks to the Transitway and a dedicated bus lane on much of the Queensway. Harder, I think, to make the argument in favour of a car.

Now, to be fair, there are simply instances where taking the car to work is necessary for any number of reasons, from work-related meetings during the day to personal appointments. But on that particular morning last week, it was difficult to look around me at the hundreds of vehicles on the road that contained only one occupant and believe all that exhaust belching sheet metal was a matter of necessity.

And the most ironic aspect of it all was the observation that many of these commuters WANT to take the bus. They don't want the hassle of having to drive with one hand on the steering wheel and one eye on the car ahead to avoid a collision. How do I know this? It's more than obvious by what many people are trying to do while driving.

For example, aside from talking on a cellphone or trying to apply makeup, I spotted one person with both thumbs in action on her BlackBerry, steering her car with timely nudges of her wrists. Another was enjoying a breakfast fruit bowl, fork in one hand, bowl in the other. Come on, people. Think how much easier all that would be sitting on a bus!

My co-worker at the wheel made a fair suggestion that could ease the congestion and encourage more carpooling. He suggested the city open the dedicated OCTranspo bus lanes to cars with more than one occupant.

It could work. In any case, from what I observed last week, bus drivers have no reason to fear that opening up their dedicated lane to carpooling would create a new congestion problem.

So often I hear Kanata residents argue in favour of that east-west light rail link. "If only there was a train to downtown I wouldn't drive my car." I smile and nod in understanding and wonder if even they believe a word of what they are saying. Reducing one-person, one-vehicle commuting isn't a matter of encouraging a change of lifestyle, it's a slow, uphill battle to win converts like a saint of old among the pagans.