Vanpoolers Climb Aboard, Hit the Snooze Button

Roland Holzman is a rarity in Southern California: a long-haul commuter who gets to work rested, refreshed and, yes, even happy. His secret to such a contented commute is not yoga exercises on the dashboard or an illegal pharmaceutical.

It is that much more elusive commodity: extra snooze time.

For six years, the aerospace engineer from Santa Clarita has shared a vanpool to El Segundo with 13 other commuters.

He cites the environmental benefits and the wear and tear he saves on his car. He speaks fondly of the friends he has made on the road, friends who occasionally meet for weekend barbecues and family outings.

But he absolutely crows about the restful naps he gets as someone else drives him from the northern reaches of Los Angeles County to his job in the South Bay.

“I get half my night’s sleep here,” Holzman said as he settled into a window seat during a recent early morning drive to his work at Boeing Satellite Systems in El Segundo.

One of Holzman’s vanpool colleagues, Diana Castano, a Boeing affirmative action compliance officer, said she is completely wiped out when she doesn’t get her usual vanpool nap.

“When I take the vanpool, I have what I call my energy nap,” she said as the vehicle sped along the Golden State Freeway. “I can then go home and play with my kids.”

In Southern California, where the right to drive solo is coveted almost as much as free speech, Holzman, Castano and their compatriots are a rare breed who represent about 1% of the commuting public.

They may be a small group, but they are content. Nearly 98% of vanpoolers surveyed last year said they would recommend the practice to others.

Vanpoolers split the costs of leasing or renting a van and share the driving duties. Sometimes an employer subsidizes the expenses.

Vanpoolers tend to stay together longer than carpoolers, perhaps because communal vans tend to be bigger and more conducive to serious leisure than the standard carpool vehicle. Vanpools remain together an average of four years, while carpools, on average, last 21/2 years, according to Southern California Rideshare.

Holzman and Castano are members of a vanpool that has operated since 1994. Both say they cannot imagine going back to commuting alone.

But being a member of a vanpool means joining a tight fellowship that dispenses its own rules and restrictions.

Every weekday morning, the 14 members of the vanpool meet at the Old Road behind a McDonald’s in Santa Clarita, where a brightly painted Ford Club Van idles at the curb.

The first rule of vanpooling is that the clock mounted inside the vehicle rules the day.

“That clock is God ... but it’s off,” said Stephen Montaperto, a Boeing safety specialist, as he settled into one of the middle seats on a recent workday morning.

Accurate or not, every vanpool member has synchronized his or her watch with the van’s digital clock. Each weekday, when that clock strikes 5:45 a.m., the van pulls away from the curb. There is no lag time. Even veteran vanpoolers have found themselves staring at an empty curb at 5:46 a.m.

The second rule is that the vanpool is run like a dictatorship. The driver decides the route and controls the radio. Vanpoolers don’t whine about the driver’s choices, lest they face the same treatment when it’s their turn behind the wheel.

On a recent commute, David Swartz, a Boeing engineer, jumped into the driver’s seat and tuned the radio to an all-news station.

Before the van pulled onto the Golden State Freeway, half of the passengers were already dozing. One pushed in a pair of ear plugs. Another rested his head on a crescent-shaped pillow he wrapped around his neck.

“No one makes demands here,” said Spencer Sager, a Boeing scientist who founded the vanpool in 1994 and manages the lease agreement with Enterprise car rental. “We are just looking for a ride to work.”

To chronicle the long, often quiet commute, Sager keeps a small 35-millimeter camera in the glove compartment.

Vanpoolers snap photos of the strange and funny scenes they sometimes encounter along the road. Their commuting photo album includes pictures of a flatbed truck hauling a huge marlin, a smiling man pounding a pair of drumsticks on his dashboard and a female driver holding a hairy little dog up to the steering wheel so the mutt could pretend to drive.

But nearly half of the photos are unflattering images of the vanpoolers sound asleep. Most appear like dying trout--heads tilted back, drooling mouths agape. In the background other vanpoolers are seen smirking.

It is one small measure of the camaraderie built over hundreds of rides and thousands of miles.

Minutes after the Northridge earthquake in 1994, Castano called Sager in a panic. She couldn’t get her electric garage door opener to work. Sager not only explained how to open the door manually but invited her to his house, which he has equipped with a gasoline-powered generator and a propane barbecue.

The vanpool group has been mostly stable, despite a few layoffs and schedule changes.

And the van-mates have become so close that five of them attended the funeral when the wife of one of their fellow riders died.

On the road, the group has endured car crashes, flat tires, road rage and hellish traffic jams.

“When you are by yourself and you are stuck in traffic, it is you against the world,” Holzman said. “But when you are in a vanpool, you have 13 others with you.”

Most of the time, the van makes good time, thanks in part to fast-moving carpool lanes.

On the recent early morning commute, the vanpool took only 38 minutes to complete the 39-mile drive to El Segundo.

On the way home, the van encountered heavy traffic in the San Fernando Valley. Still, the 80-minute return trip was tolerable, considering the amount of terrain covered. It also made for plenty of snooze time.

When the van stopped in Santa Clarita, the platoon of well-rested vanpoolers got out, stretched, rubbed their eyes and tried to smooth the gravity-defying hair spurs, caused by the vehicle’s headrests.

Said Castano: “That is another bad thing you should know about: vanpool hair.”

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