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Hitchhiking program on B.C. island latest in new wave of casual ride-sharing

GPS company TomTom has rated Vancouver the worst city in Canada for traffic congestion

Growth has eroded some of the West Coast's laid back reputation but there are still outposts of its sixties-era hippie days in places like the Gulf Islands and Sunshine Coast.

Even there, though, the easy-going ambiance is disappearing but not without a fight.

The National Post reports that residents of Bowen Island, a short ferry ride north of Vancouver, are launching what's thought to be Canada's first officially sanctioned hitchhiking system as a way to reduce road traffic and return some of the friendliness that once characterized island life.

Hitchhiking is of course illegal under the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act, as it is in most of Canada.

“We think of it more as a ridesharing rather than a hitchhiking program," co-ordinator D.G. Blair of the project, dubbed Linkng Island Through Friendly Transportation (LIFT) told the Post.

"When I first moved to Bowen, you couldn't walk down the street without someone offering you a ride. We're looking at tis as a way to get back to where we came from."

[ Related: Calgary city planner suggests hitchhiking to ease traffic congestion ]

Blair said it was easy to thumb a ride in the days when the island was peopled with artists and back-to-the-landers. But retirees and Vancouver residents who commute to the city now make up a growing number of Bowen's 3,400 residents and seem less willing to pick up strangers.

Old-school hitchhiking has developed a dark reputation in the last few decades, especially in British Columbia where one or more killers has been preying on women thumbing rides on lonely roads, mostly in B.C.'s northern Interior that have been dubbed the Highway of Tears.

But people still needs rides and they're using the web and social media to find them.

Sites such as PickUpPal, Craigs List and Kijiji have become hubs to connect motorists with riders, according to Canada.com.

PickUpPal operates in more than 100 countries but apparently hit a pothole in Ontario when a bus company successfully challenged its service and triggered more than $11,000 in fines for operating an unlicensed transport business, according to Treehugger.com.

But the advent of smart phones has spawned a generation of mobile apps such as Live Rides, which helps match drivers and riders more spontaneously, the Globe and Mail reported in December.

Calgary's planning chief, Rollin Stanley, is even suggesting using hitchhiking as a way to relieve the car-friendly city's chronic congestion, the National Post reported recently.

Stanley is enthusiastic about something called "slugging," which apparently involves riders congregating near high-occupancy vehicle lanes. There's mutual benefit, he says, because riders get a lift and drivers qualify to use the less clogged HOV lanes.

“It’s a perfect example of a grassroots solution,” said Stanley, who worked in traffic planning in Toronto, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. “There’s not all this bureaucratic overhead trying to regulate it. It’s just people trying to solve a problem and solve it in a way that’s so efficient.”

Bowen Island's LIFT doesn't involve thumbing. Instead, participants will use a system of colour-coded tags and maps. Motorists would display tags on their rear-view mirrors indicating which neighbourhood they travel to and pedestrians would wear matching tags on lanyards, hoping to snag rides at designated LIFT stops, the Post said.

“It’s all pretty easygoing — you should not feel pressure to pick up the first person in a line or even anyone in the line,” said Blair.

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On Saltspring Island, southeast of Victoria, hitchhiking is still a routine practice despite the one-time hippie haven's evolution into an upscale retreat for wealthier city folk, the Post said. And on Pender Island, residents have established informal car stops where people can flag down motorists.

Back on Bowen, the program has been slow to catch on despite operating informally since 2010, perhaps because of a lack of promotion. But a $49,000 grant from Environment Canada's EcoAction Community Funding Program may help.