The City of London may have done too good a job at promoting carpooling among drivers.
For years the city has been pushing the benefits of sharing a ride, but now the city’s only commuter parting lot at Bradley Avenue and Veterans Memorial Parkway is overcrowded, and it's only been open for three years.
One commuter says, "There is countless mornings where I show up, I've got buddies that work too, half the time when we come here we're all usually parking in the mud or something like that. It's usually full by seven in the morning."
He says there have even been instances where his car has sunk into the mud and had to be pulled out by friends.
Hannah Keating uses the lot and says, "It's really frustrating because it's such a great carpool lot and it's so awesome to be able to have somehwere to come and park and carpool and sort of save gas, not have to drive as often. And then all of a sudden it's so absolutely jam packed, that makes it impossible."
The city is considering expanding the lot, but city engineer Doug McRae says it's tough to figure out how many ride-share spots are needed.
"It's very hard to predict and you can see it at a lot of the commuter parking lots across the province some of them are underutilized, some of them are overutilized."
When the lot was originally planned, McRae explains, they looked at aerial photos of the old, informal dirt lot and then doubled the number of available spots, which they thought would be sufficient.
While those who use the lot are hopeful for expansion soon, the city and Ministry of Transportation have not started discussions on expansion or the addition of another lot.
