Vans Warped Tour Goes Green(er), Partners With Online Carpooling Company

Last week, we mentioned that the Irvine City Council brought up some collective beef over the Vans Warped Tour's Irvine stop at the Great Park on Thursday–and all the troublesome, traffic-making punks that will come with it. Well, even though the fest will certainly foil any dog walking, kite flying, and outdoor tai chi classes in the city's safest public space, at least festival organizers are working on reducing the amount of cars cramming the roads.

This year, the festival partners with online carpooling company Amovens to reduce its carbon footprint by providing an affordable, sustainable mode of transportation for ticket holders. And, if it works, it might give Irvine's council members one less thing to whine about.

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Using smartphone technology, Amovens, founded in 2009, relies a user-friendly database and free iPhone app that allows people to type in their location and time of departure for any stop on the Warped Tour to find potential carpool buddies in their area. Though this is the first time they've partnered with the Warped Tour, Amovens is confident that their technology–proven to work for a number of  festivals including MUTEK and Noise Pop–will do well in Irvine and other stops on the tour.

The Amovens system also lets drivers sell unoccupied seats in their cars
to other Warped Tour attendees to help cut down on travel costs such as
gas, tolls and parking, all while reducing the Warped Tour's carbon
footprint with fewer cars and
emissions.

Jef Cozza, a representative for Amovens, says that at least one of the concerns raised by the Irvine city council–car traffic–is something his company is working hard to eradicate at festivals.

“There's really no easy, cheap, quick way to fix the problem of local infrastructure not being sufficient for events like this,” Cozza says. “Local governments are squeezed. So we've been looking at a way to get people to local communities and figure out how to get them there safely and in the most environmentally sustainable way possible.”

Warped Tour fans will be able to access the ridesharing platform directly from the festival's website, or through Amovens events page. Each stop on the tour will have its own separate ridesharing webpage.

With Amovens technology, which boasts approximately 50,000 users, Cozza
says that the technological advancements in resource sharing programs
like this could allow festival goers to use a fraction of the cars
currently on the road.

“Just as the way the music world was able to show us how file sharing was going to change the way we consume media, I think the music world is also going to be the first one to show us how resource sharing is going to be the way we travel in the future.”

However, when it comes to alleviating Irvine City Councilman Jeffrey Lalloway's stress over the amount for times Anti-Flag says “fuck police brutality” in a single song, we don't think there's an app for that.  

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