Similar Ridesharing operations

Ridesharing is a rapidly growing idea with many service offerings in place today. Inevitably these few successful transportation experiments will grow to use GPS and WiFi networking as a next step. Many carpool registration and ridesharing sites:

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RideSharing Sites - Mapped and Registered Commuter Carpools

More formal registration and link ups with commuters based on specified routes and schedules. Ridesharing networks present a formal and structured transit connection - lasting over a longer time.

List of 21 Ridematching systems  Compiled by the University of South Florida - with brief descriptions of each vendor

RideSearch a Free Nationwide Carpool Service Texas based. "RideSearch.com helps you find other commuters in the area for a safe, secure rideshare experience. Our goal here at RideSearch is to provide the best possible matches for your commute. Ridesearch.com is committed to making our world better through carpooling. We can help you save gas while also reducing harmful car emissions and automobile wear and tear."

Travelmatelink due in October 2008 "Find people to share your trip • Find new friends and enjoy your travel TravelMateLink is a free system gets the vehicle owners and passengers together. Help to the World to be green and carbon free."

RideshareOnline provides you an easy way to find others in Washington or Idaho who are interested in sharing their commute in a carpool or vanpool.

Goosenetworks "... our mission is to revolutionize transportation by providing convenient alternatives to driving alone. Organizations use our services to reduce their members' drive alone trips by increasing access to relevant alternatives. Our services are 100% hosted by Goose Networks and require no installation or maintenance by client administrators. Goose Networks is a privately-held company, based in Seattle, WA."

Washington State Ridesharing Organization (WSRO) was established to encourage policy makers, employers and commuters to support the use of transportation alternatives to driving alone. The goal is to reduce air pollution, traffic congestion, and energy consumption throughout Washington State and the Pacific Northwest. WSRO was incorporated as a 501c(6) non-profit organization in 1989.

iCarpool calls itself "one of the fastest growing carpool networks worldwide... provides tools to manage and promote alternative transportation helping CTR programs significantly. iCarpool is owned by Interact Soft Inc which was founded in 2006. Interact Soft Inc is a WA, USA based regular corporation which is privately held. It's secure - your personal information is protected; High precision trip matching helps you find the best carpool matchFind co-workers, neighbors and friends for carpool; Use for daily commute, recurring trips, long distance trips and events... throughout USA, Canada, Europe and Australia FREE"

PickupPal This smooth running and popular Ontario operation is fairly new and free - but faces some challenges from government transit systems. Video shows how it works as an online connection service.

MyKoolPool startup based in Mumbai, India offers trusted connections by SMS text to cell phones. An IBN video describes it well

GoLoco - ridesharing service "helping communities create their own personal public transportation network." GoLoco charges a fee to help you track cars, friends, trips, expenses as a way to share travel and expenses

eRideShare "...is a FREE service for connecting commuters, or travelers going the same way. Register and then place a listing, then search and contact. eRideShare.com is the top carpool and cross-country rideshare site in the US and Canada."

Foothill Rideshare in California offers free rideshare services for counties of Amador, Calaveras, and Tuoloumne.

Find a Rideshare Meetup Group near you.   Meet other local commuters and travelers to arrange carpools and long-distance travel.  More info from eRideshare.com

RideShark sells systems for ridesharing and ridematching in Carpool, vanpool, bicycle, walking and transit ridematching. Easy to use search functionality to maximize compatible matches. Fully clickable maps to pinpoint the user's origin and destination instantly using centralized Microsoft MapPoint maps, Google maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth Maps. Address and email verification. Automated data purging so only active users come up in matches.

Free and Instant Commuter Carpools - called "Slugging"

In Washington DC and Virginia, they call it Slugging -- sort of a combination of hitchhiking and carpooling. Some call it "Casual Carpooling" This started over 30 years ago and today you will see DC commuters at 14th Street by the Memorial Bridge -- Drivers needing extra riders to get into the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes will pick up pedestrian commuters needing a ride to work.

Commuting in Northern Virginia works without government regulation or support. Riders line up at dozens of designated stops and drivers pick up those going to their destination.

NPR News story on Slugging
http://www.slug-lines.com/
http://www.roadstothefuture.com/Shirley_Highway.html

Craigslist Rideshare posting

Craigslist offers free listings for ridesharing in each community served by Craigslist. Contact and arrangements are the responsibility of the poster.

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/  http://seattle.craigslist.org/rid/

University of Washington Intelligent Transportation Systems

Research efforts focus on the application of computer and communications technologies to solving transportation problems. The ITS research program actively collaborates with government and industry, making it a regional resource for advanced answers to transportation issues. Achievements thus far include: SST and SWIFT

Seattle Smart Traveler (SST) was the ride sharing component of the SWIFT project and demonstrated the ability to use advanced communications networks to facilitate dynamic ride sharing for employees of a large organization. Dynamic ride sharing is the concept whereby commuters are linked with one another for the purpose of sharing a single trip together. Unlike traditional shared ride arrangements, a dynamic ride-sharing system does not seek to place commuters in a permanent arrangement. Rather, a dynamic system allows individuals seeking to share a ride to learn of other commuters who share their trip (origin, destination, travel times) for just one specific trip. The trip can be a one-way or a round trip, and the shared trip is generally implemented within a short time after making arrangements. SST used the University of Washington, the largest employer in Seattle, as the site for the dynamic ride sharing demonstration. The SST program allowed users to quickly and easily learn of others who shared their transportation needs for any specific trip or set of trips that they wished to make. In addition, it allowed users to send an e-mail message to any or all of these individuals direclty from the SST application.

http://sst.its.washington.edu/sst/ The SST system is no longer operational; however, a demonstration of the project can be viewed by following the SST link and clicking on the off-line demonstration that shows an example of a typical SST interaction. Further information about the results of the SST program can be found in papers that were presented at the 1996 World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems and at the 1997 Transportation Research Board Annnual Meeting. (all that happened before the Bush/Cheney team tried to kill everything worthwhile in civilization )

Green Car Congress

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/07/texting_sms_for.html

The path to sustainable mobility is complex, with numerous competing and complementary approaches to alternative energy sources, production, distribution and applications; fuel and power-train options; materials; safety, economic and environmental considerations and trade-offs; policy issues; and different timelines for research, development and deployment.

Green Car Congress' mission is to provide timely, high-quality editorial about the full spectrum of energy options, technologies, products, issues and policies related to sustainable mobility.

Texxi

Texxi ("Texxi, the taxi you text") is a demand-responsive transit brokerage (DRT Brokerage) system. Use SMS messaging to book your seat on a shared taxi, limousine or bus with people travelling in the same direction you are.

Texxi is a scheme that promotes social inclusion. The transit exchange maintains information about the accessibility status of a large number of road based for-hire passenger vehicles.

This is a fully automated system that makes the task of locating, scheduling and dynamically allocating appropriate accessible vehicles much more simple and centralized.

Texxi("Texxi, the taxi you text") is a demand-responsive transit brokerage (DRT Brokerage) system. Prospective passengers send their postcode to the Texxi SMS number. The system then aggregates other passengers wanting to go to the same area and confirms details of the taxi driver's name and badge number to the passengers Prospective passengers send their postcode to the Texxi SMS number. The system then aggregates other passengers wanting to go to the same area and confirms details of the taxi driver's name and badge number to the passengers. Passengers are instructed to go to pre-determined pickup points to meet the driver who will have received a text confirming each passenger's booking reference. In the prototype demonstration in Liverpool, each passenger will pre-pay a flat fee of £5.Benefits of this approach include:
* Lower passenger fares for point-to-point travel. * Increased revenue for the taxi driver for essentially the same work. * Reduction of potential CO2 emissions and fuel consumption as the total number of trips are reduced.

Social resource sharing

CouchSurfing.com CouchSurfing is a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit. Subscribers need to make the connections.

Wireless Projects currently under development:

The most promising is Piggyback for the Google owned Android phone system - currently this French team is developing a system to "Share your car and the road, save on gas, meet people"   Piggyback’s objective is "to share car-related expenses between users, while reducing everybody’s carbon footprint in the process".  Right now this is nearest to an ithumb/wiride service, one hopes they will be device agnostic.

iPhone only for now: San Francisco based Avego has a new product for the iPhone. Later it will work for any cell phone. The company is a very new startup. Video shows how it works. Very impressive and most promising

Another iPhone only service Carticipate   An experiment in social transportation - Started October 2008 Currently 850 rides across 1745 places