Here’s how to get paid to change your commute habits in Dallas-Fort Worth

Dallas-Fort Worth residents who regularly travel the TEXpress lane network can receive exclusive discounts and pricing as part of a new pilot program from the North Central Texas Council of Governments.

Drivers may already be familiar with the GoCarma app if they have downloaded it to access discounts on high-utilization vehicles on the network. But a new pilot will also invite select users to participate in a rewards program that tracks their driving habits and allows them to earn points — which they use to enter gift card sweepstakes — when they change those habits.

This is a novel approach to tackling the region’s congestion, which has increased sharply in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to at least one study.

The city council launched the app in 2020 to encourage motorists to carpool by offering a 50% toll discount to high-occupancy vehicles during peak periods. But the planners also want to test which incentives encourage drivers to drive outside of rush hour or to take less congested routes.

“We are also looking at scenarios where they could transfer like a transit line parallel to a corridor. So there are several scenarios that we will test,” said Natalie Bettger, senior program manager at NCTCOG.

Here’s how it works: GoCarma users who sign up for the program and meet the criteria — namely, traveling regularly in one of the corridors that planners study during rush hour — are invited to sign up for rewards. They receive prompts to optimize their driving behavior and the app records this. This earns users points, and the more points they have, the greater their chance of winning one of the monthly gift card drawings.

Participants can also earn points for completing surveys about their driving habits.

First place winners will receive a $2,500 gift card, second place will receive $750, and third place will receive $200.

About 220 users have already signed up for the first scenario planners rolled out along Interstate 35W. It will encourage drivers to optimize their commutes to drive during off-peak hours, while the next one will take place on Interstate 35E and encourage drivers to take an alternate route during heavy traffic.

“What we’re looking at in a regional congestion scenario is whether it’s worth doing programs like this rather than maybe adding additional capacity to the roads, right?” Bettget said. “So can we help spread that burden across multiple hours of the day instead of everyone cramming into two peak times? So if we can spread that out and potentially make our road infrastructure last longer, reduce congestion and improve air quality, it might be more cost-effective for us to do programs like this than to add a lot more capacity out there.”

The data collected by planners will help inform future efforts to ease the gridlock as the region continues to grow.

“The real goal is to give them information so they can make decisions and incentivize them to potentially make less constipated decisions. In this way it helps us offset the congestion on our roads,” said Bettger.

The pilot program ends on December 25th. Dallas-Fort Worth drivers can download the GoCarma app on the App Store and Google Play.

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