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Brown University encourages those community members who commute to Brown to form carpools to save money, reduce the number of cars that come to campus, and improve their chances for assignment to a parking lot that they would like to park in.

NEW! A Brown-only carpool forum to find other Brown community members who want to form or join a carpool! If you don't find anyone in your area on the Brown-only forum, check out the RIPTA Alternet carpool service.

Here's how carpooling works:

• A carpool is made up of a minimum of two Brown employees who do not live at the same address.  There may be other non-Brown people in the car pool after this requirement is met, but the Brown employees must pay Brown for the space.  The Brown members of the carpool must handle getting reimbursed by the non-Brown members of the carpool themselves.
• In order to qualify for a Guaranteed Ride Home, the carpool must also, and separately, register itself with RIPTA Express Travel.
• Carpooling may be paid for only by proportionate pre-tax payroll deduction.
• A carpool may wait list itself for one lot, and will be placed at the top of the waiting list for that lot.  (We so not have the capacity to administer multiple lot choices.)  When the carpool is formed, members may go to the Parking Office and pick from among the lots that have space available, and also put themselves on a lot waiting list at that time.  They may also convert a lot assignment belonging to one of the members into the carpool's lot assignment if they wish.  Some lots can be considered as the same lot for this purpose, e.g. Lots 42-43-45 can be treated as one lot for this purpose.  If several carpools pick the same lot, they will be stacked at the top of the list on a first-come, first-served basis. 
• A carpool ceases to exist when there is only one member left, and the carpool's lot assignment reverts to the Parking Office at that point for reassignment.  If the last remaining carpool member was assigned to that lot before the formation of the carpool, and his or her assignment was converted into the carpool's lot assignment, then that he or she may retain the lot assignment and pay for it individually as before. 
• New members may be recruited into the carpool, thus preserving the carpool's lot assignment, and providing the carpool with a recruiting tool to continue to exist.
• Only one hangtag will be issued because otherwise it is nearly impossible for the Parking Officers to administer the carpools.  This means that occasionally carpool members may need to park in the Visitor Parking Lot or on the street if their ride is unexpectedly unable to come to work one day and there is insufficient time for one of the other carpool members to pick up the hang tag. Each carpooler will receive one free one-day parking permit per year to save for use in this situation.
• To exit a carpool, a member must go to the Parking Office and "un-register" him or herself in order to stop the parking payroll deduction, which is managed and reported to Payroll by the Parking Office. 

If you've considered carpooling, but are worried about having to be able to get home in an emergency, see RIPTA's Guaranteed Ride Home Program for carpoolers.