Flexible carpooling is
carpooling
Carpooling (also car-sharing, ride-sharing and lift-sharing) is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves.
By having more people usi ...
that is not arranged ahead of time, but instead makes use of designated meeting places. It seeks to replicate the informal "
slug-lines" that form in
Washington DC
)
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, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
,
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 ...
, and
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
, by establishing more formal locations for travelers to form carpools without advance contact.
The essence of the systems is the use of a meeting-place to form carpools, without any advance contact between the participants. For people wishing to carpool, going to a meeting place is a very low-effort method for getting into a carpool, compared with any other system that involves contacting potential riders or drivers in advance, and arranging the trip. The key is that other people are also coming to the meeting place, and there need to be sufficient people traveling from any one meeting-place to the common destination so that the waiting time to form a carpool is acceptable.
The Transportation Research Board is carrying out research to determine the feasibility of 'flexible carpooling to transit stations'.
[Transit IDEA](_blank)
/ref> Since fewer people are carpooling today than were thirty years ago, the federal government, as well as local governments and the Department of Defense, are trying to reverse the decline.
/ref>
It is estimated that San Francisco saves almost 1 million gallons of gasoline and associated emissions each year because of the operation of the informal flexible carpooling system.
Implementation
From 1979 to 1980, Marin County, California
Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...
, implemented a flexible carpooling system using as meeting points several major intersections near bus stops.[Chan, Nelson D., and Susan A. Shaheen.]
RIDESHARING IN NORTH AMERICA: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
." Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, 2011.
In 2009 the Washington State Legislature set aside $400,000 for a pilot project to test meeting-place based carpooling in the SR 520 corridor of Seattle.
/ref> This will incorporate the Avego smartphone ridematching system.
In 2010 the Auckland Regional Transport Authority
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) was the central co-ordinating agency for transport (especially but not only public transport) in the Auckland Region of New Zealand from 2004 to 2010. In this role, ARTA provided public transport s ...
considered a flexible carpooling proposal by Trip Convergence Ltd.
See also
* Traditional carsharing
Carsharing or car sharing (AU, NZ, CA, TH, & US) or car clubs (UK) is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. It differs from traditional car rental in that the owners of the cars are often pr ...
and peer-to-peer carsharing
Peer-to-peer carsharing (also known as person-to-person carsharing and peer-to-peer car rental) is the process whereby existing car owners make their vehicles available for others to rent for short periods of time.
The concept
Peer-to-peer carsha ...
allow access to automobiles for self-driven journeys.
* Carpool
Carpooling (also car-sharing, ride-sharing and lift-sharing) is the sharing of Automobile, car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves.
By having more ...
* Hitchhiking
Hitchhiking (also known as thumbing, autostop or hitching) is a means of transportation that is gained by asking individuals, usually strangers, for a ride in their car or other vehicle. The ride is usually, but not always, free.
Nomads hav ...
* Personal public transport
Personal public transport (PPT) is a network of private rental vehicles for users to drive, distributed at fixed locations throughout an area and available to the general public in such a way that each user has the ability to determine the route ...
* Shared transport
* Slugging
Slugging, also known as casual carpooling, is the practice of forming ad hoc, informal carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking. A driver picks up these non-paying passengers (known as ...
* Sustainable transportation
* Trempiada
* Vanpool
* Ridesharing company
A ridesharing company (also known as a transportation network company, ride-hailing service; the vehicles are called app-taxis or e-taxis) is a company that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire tha ...
Notes and references
{{Public transport
Carsharing
Hitchhiking