The Emergency Ride Home Program offers reimbursements for rides home in the event of qualified emergencies for faculty and staff members who commute to work using alternative transportation.
The Office of Sustainability would like to remind faculty and staff about the Emergency Ride Home Program which offers reimbursements for rides home in the event of qualified emergencies for faculty and staff who commute to work using alternative transportation. To qualify, the faculty or staff member must be a part-time or full-time employee and have commuted to work via bike, train, walking, bus or carpool on the day of the emergency.
Ryan Johnson, associate professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Elon, frequently bikes and takes the train to get to work. He has used the Emergency Ride Home Program approximately two to three times per year on occasions when the train was cancelled or carpools became unavailable. He believes that programs such as the Emergency Ride Home Program are very important in de-centralizing the car as the primary method of transportation for many people.
“When I got rid of my car four years ago, this program might have been the one that helped me feel confident enough that I could live without dependency on a car when getting to and from campus,” Johnson said. He also added that programs like the Emergency Ride Home Program are “an excellent and effective way to show people how they do not have to view the car as the only way of getting through the world.”
In 2024, commuter travel accounted for 16% of Elon’s carbon emissions. As a university, Elon encourages and supports sustainable transportation to reduce carbon emissions as a step towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2037.
The Office of Sustainability offers reimbursement for emergency rides home a maximum of four times a year. For more information on transportation and sustainability at Elon, please visit the Office of Sustainability’s website.