NOACA Wants To Pay You Money to Not Drive Your Car in October

Feel like making $200 just for riding a bike or taking RTA?

Well, according to the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency (NOACA), you have a good shot of doing so in October.

For the second time this year, NOACA is partnering with Gohio Commute to incentivize Northeast Ohioans to curtail—or ideally, eliminate—the use of fossil fuels in their commutes.

Meaning through cold-hard cash: NOACA is willing to literally pay you to bike, carpool, take transit, walk, scooter or just leave the car in the garage for the day.

Throughout the entirety of next month, any car-owners over 18 in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain or Medina counties can log their non-auto mileage on Gohio for a chance, at the end of October, to win Visa gift cards from $25 to $200.

The motivation, of course is “to provide participants the information needed to make smart travel choices,” NOACA said in a press release, “to save money, improve your health and improve air quality.”

Such an effort to bolster the area’s interest in non-carbon transport is a small notch in NOACA’s Climate Action Plan, a regional attempt to reach a national net-zero in carbon emissions by 2050, as set forth last year by the Biden administration.

The attempt also fits into a Cleveland gradually becoming more amenable to alternative forms of transportation, as bike-and-walk-friendly projects come closer into view—like the North Marginal Trail Connector and the Cleveland Moves plan to beef up the city with safer bikeways.

Which Gohio seems to been aiding. In their September rendition, 249 participants logged 26,461 miles of non-car commuting, saving presumably $12,000 in gas costs. And about nine tons of carbon emitted.

Yet, with more than half of Cuyahoga County residents residing in the surburbs, RTA’s paltry reach to those on the fringe might not seem feasible over cars

Heading from Strongsville to the County Building saves, Gohio’s map tells us, six pounds of carbon, yet it takes nearly an hour longer via RTA. (Or, you could just carpool with 11 others who signed up nearby.)

Winners of that $200 grand prize will be announced, NOACA says, on October 31.

Everyone interested can sign up here.

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