Irvine : Mobile Ad Campaign Promotes Ride Sharing

To promote ride sharing, large, portable signs with messages such as “Does it seem like this billboard is moving faster than you?” have been greeting motorists this week at key intersections in the Irvine Spectrum light industrial and office complex.

Sponsored by Spectrumotion, the area’s transportation management association, the ad campaign is also intended to help The Irvine Co. achieve traffic reduction goals for the area that were set by the city as a condition of development.

Charity Gavaza, Spectrumotion’s executive director, estimates that 20% of the 17,000 employees in the Spectrum area already use car or van pools, mass transit or bicycles, or walk to work.

One of the portable billboards states: “If you van pooled, you would have read this message 10 minutes ago.”

County transportation officials believe the Spectrum area is ripe for car-pooling and van-pooling efforts because so many workers there share the same work destinations. The complex is located near the junction of the Santa Ana and San Diego Freeways.