License To Car Pool
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.25.08
Wendy Waters at All About Cities ponders the issue of making car pools work in today's (evidently completely paranoid) society, for those communities without the density or population to support transit. She mashes the latest technologies and comes up with some interesting ideas:
1. With GPS technology, or cel phone triangulation, drivers and passengers could find each other. A licensed passenger would say that they are at a certain intersection and want a ride to a particular place.
2. you could employ the eBay-like system of rating passengers and drivers. Every time a driver offers a ride, the passenger rates him or her — and the passengers are rated by the drivers.
3. a special carpooling device (which might just be a special cel phone) could have an “emergency” button. If a driver or passenger needs police assistance now, they press it. With the built in GPS or locational technology, the police would instantly know where they are — and who they are. This would provide a level of safety.
4. perhaps a modest fee would be available to drivers, to compensate them. For example, 10c a kilometer or mile.
She concludes: "As car ownership grows in cost, along with the price of operating a vehicle, offering carpool rides could be a way for some people to afford ownership — especially students, who could offer rides to fellow students. Some drivers and passengers would get to know each other, as they may tend to travel the same directions at the same time — which would further add to the safety of the system." More detail at ::All About Cities
You might want to try out PickupPal.com - it does these things already except for the panic button.
Even better is the Carpool app on Facebook. There are tons of rides listed and you can see profiles and interact on facebook before sharing a ride. Kind of eliminates the need for the panic button...
Isn't this basically hitch hiking? We had this system up until the 80's
Sounds complicated and top heavy.
In the East Bay all regional bus stops became defacto rider pickup points every morning. HOV's were given both free tolls over the bridge, plus HOVs got to leapfrog the queue to enter the Bay Bridge. And of course, the riders didn't have to pay bus fares. Huge incentives and it became massively popular. Four people in an economy car starts to get you into bus MPG territory, and it was a lot more comfortable and quick.
The bus company complained because it was cherry picking their ridership.
The other low-tech solution is, of course, hitch hiking. Almost entirely safe. Now, with cellphones, when you get a ride you can call your voicemail and leave a message about who your riding with, license plate, etc. so there's less incentive for misbehavior. But in general, all those old scare stories about the risks of hitching were vastly overblown.
Re: the Carpool Facebook app, we just debuted a segment on it on Current TV
http://current.com/contentItem.htm?masterId=41604620
(full disclosure: I work for Current and love carpool lanes ; )