Computer-matched car pooling -- the next "killer app" and good energy policy

Car pooling or paid ride sharing should be computerized, at least for commuters.  Here's how a good system might work, using currently available technology.  It could even be the next great application for computers, wi-fi, and the internet.

    Way back in the 1960's or 70's I read that almost any mass transit system looked good compared to people commuting one to a car, but if you could average four riders per car, almost nothing imaginable was as efficient, at least for fuel and probably for capital outlay as well.  After all, the cars are already bought, the owners already know how to drive them, and the current road system is more than adequate if commuting traffic were cut by three fourths.  The problem is making four to a car attractive enough, especially convenient enough.  Car pooling gets to be a drag very quickly if anyone needs to change his schedule.

    Truckers, even solo independent truckers, are using the internet to match loads to trucks that need to go someplace anyway.  Web sites apparently post loads available with departure points and destinations so a trucker who just dropped a load away from home can find another load to haul on his trip back home.  In stead of phoning around, sometimes for days, a trucker can go online and then telephone to confirm his return trip load in half an hour.  That's great turnaround time for a trip that can take several days.  But a typical commute takes 30 to 90 minutes, so thirty minutes wait to fill up your car, or to find a full car ready to go, is a gross inconvenience.  To be competitive, car pooling almost needs to be several minutes faster than walking from your parking place to your desk at work, just to make up for the time lost while you watch one or two other guys being picked up in the morning or dropped off at night.  What's more, it still has to be flexible, so if you want to leave early or late, you can still get a ride nearly as quickly.  Looking up web sites is too cumbersome for this.  Commuters need some sort of very rapid computerized matching of riders, empty seats, departure points, and destinations.

    What if you could just telephone the 'commuter computer' in the morning when you were ready to leave, and tap in a few extra numbers to confirm who and where you are and your destination.  That could be preprogrammed into your home and mobile phones.  If a car came to your house in just a few minutes, and only stopped to pick up one other person, and dropped you off right at the door to work after dropping off only one other person, it might actually be better than driving yourself on a day with bad weather.  That could be done if everyone who wanted to drive had a laptop computer in his car, or a car computer, that had mobile internet access.  As the driver started to work in the morning, he would turn on his car computer and notify the commuter matching service of his destination and the number of empty seats he has.  The car computer should have G.P.S., so it can report where the car really is.  Within seconds, the matching service should give the car computer the information on the best route to pick up riders, and they should all be nearby.  The G.P.S. navigation in the car computer should help the driver find his riders -- they may vary from day to day and he may not know the way to their houses.  The car computer should then figure the best route to work, dropping the passengers off so the driver ends up near his own destination.  

    On the way home, you might 'swipe' something like a credit card with your name and home address into some sort of card reader located near a good pick up point.  The card reader could add its location and send the ride request to the ride matching computer.  Within minutes, a ride should come to the pickup point for you.  Commuter cars might even have some sort of display mounted on the rearview mirror, facing outward, that would have your name in flashing lights, so you'd know the right car.  If you ended your work day away from where you started, you wouldn't need to go back to get your car.  Businesses where you might want to stop on your way home could give you cards with their address on the 'swipe strip,' and with an ad and their business hours, to boot.  ("Had a tough day?  Stop at Louie's Bar on the way home!  After all, you're not driving!")  

    The passengers should expect to pay for their ride, and they should also expect safety monitoring, in the form of a computer camera that would send a picture of the inside of the car to some central 'filing' computer every few seconds.  Those files could be discarded when they were a week old, but the pictures should deter any crime from happening in the commuter cars.  Public transportation doesn't allow for much privacy; at least commuting in a monitored car should be safer than riding a bus or subway.  After all, it's hard to pick somebody's pocket when he's sitting down, and it's dangerous to try with the camera on.  (Just be sure to turn the camera off when you go parking on Lover's Lane.)  

    Such a scheme might even help put the right number of cars on the road every morning.  If the commuter matching program can't find anybody nearby to give you a ride, it could suggest that you drive yourself, and pick up some folks on your way.  You should make enough to pay for your gas and wear on the car, and maybe even enough for pricey, convenient parking if you work in a congested area.  If you don't own a car, a ride-matching program should be almost as convenient as commuting by taxicab, and a lot cheaper.  To avoid stealing too much business from taxis, the program could limit commuter cars to one round trip a day; that should at least blunt any political opposition to the scheme from taxicab companies.  Prices for rides should be determined by a formula in the computer program, but the formula could charge more on days nobody wants to drive.  It might make getting up an hour early to shovel snow off your driveway worthwhile if everybody's fare went up five bucks.  The passengers ought to be happy to pay that much for the privilege of not shoveling their own driveways.  Young car owners would have another way to use their cars to help earn the car payment, in case delivering pizza doesn't bring in enough.  On ozone action days, the city could subsidize rides, if the computer could write checks or credit bank accounts.  

    There's money to be made if such a system worked well.  If Bill Gates or Steve Jobs could get, say, Houston to adopt a system, and it reduced congestion and smog, the world would beat a path to his door.  Every car would need a computer with wireless internet access that worked across a whole city -- even in tunnels and 'urban canyons'.  Every car computer would need a commuter matching program and maybe a camera and a lighted display.  The camera and display lights might be on opposite sides of the same gadget; it might hang on the rearview mirror.   The central matching computer might need to be some humongous supercomputer, but maybe not.  It might work better to disperse the matching among all the car computers.  That way you might even get to arrange always to pick up your girlfriend, or never to pick up your flatulent brother in law.  

    A fast enough computer system could basically create an efficient market in rides to work and back, and perhaps in rides to wherever you want to go within a city.  It might put some public transportation out of business, but if buses on fixed routes can't compete with custom-matched rides, let's punt the buses.  Most of them seem to need subsidies, anyway.  Up to now, you couldn't look out your window at the traffic and flag down the car that is going your way.  Maybe soon, you'll do just that.

•  Rather than a camera

  I'd rather have a "web of trust" system.  Sure, it's basically the Internet equivalent of a gated community, but such things do have their time and place (as when I'm inviting a total stranger into my car).

  Guess I'd have to clean up my back seat...

  ...and start driving to work... :)

  by socratic on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 07:54:36 PM PDT

  •  Lots of back seats

    would need to get cleaned up, and the lost seatbelts fished out from the crack between the cushions.  

    We'd probably have to adjust attitudes a little, too.  We'd need to think of our cars less as an extension of our bodies and personalities, and more as just transportation.  

    by david78209 on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 08:27:38 PM PDT

    •  weird...

      We'd need to think of our cars less as an extension of our bodies and personalities, and more as just transportation.

      i have a hard time thinking of cars i've owned as anything but transportation... that people think of them as more is really bizarre, fmpov.

      TK

      by TrollKing on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 09:30:20 PM PDT

      •  Really?

        Watch -- or read -- an ad for a sports car and see if you think it's trying to associate the car with the male organ.  

        Not just cars.  The old Robert Downey movie, Putney Swope, starts off with a stuffy ad agency hiring a consultant (whose character could be based on Timothy Leary or Hunter Thompson) to help write a beer ad.  For $28,000 (in 1970's money) the consultant tells them, "Beer is cock," and leaves.  Think it's an exaggeration?  The scene was inspired partly by a real beer ad that bragged, "The beer with the ten-minute head."

        by david78209 on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 08:26:42 AM PDT

        •  yeah, but that's beer...

          not a car.  beer is an extension of my body... there's one at the end of my arm right now.

          TK

          by TrollKing on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 01:16:23 PM PDT

          •  That gem made my day!

            Thank you VERY much.

            by david78209 on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 04:21:28 PM PDT

            •  excellent...

              and now you made my day.  grazie.

              TK

              by TrollKing on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 12:45:56 AM PDT

        •  Actual quote by Swope

          (as I recall) to all the high muckity-muck marketing gurus in the big, bad corporate boardroom: "Beer is pee-pee dickie"

          But I may not have remembered that line right!

          by tom 47 on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 09:11:07 AM PDT

          •  You may be right

            and I may have read somewhere that an actual, serious consultant told real live ad men, "Beer is cock."

            by david78209 on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 03:04:03 PM PDT

•  Take It Steps Further

  I've written about this here. I think that's definitely the first step but that it can be expanded... To job and home swapping (of particular interest for low income folks) to eliminate a major commute altogether. Employers and landlords would see benefits in reliability and value, so they might participate.

  by NewDirection on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 08:05:38 PM PDT

  •  quetion: swapping..?

    "Home and job swapping"....?   Please explain more, I've never heard of this.

    by G2geek on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 12:15:13 AM PDT

    •  Far As I Know...

      ...The idea originated with me. But it probably did not.
      Basically, imagine you were a city planner with information on where everyone lives and works. You'd see zillions of lines showing the paths everyone must travel in their daily lives. With the goal of shortening and decongesting those paths, there would be many reconfigurations of the home and work points which would yield vastly shorter travel lines.

      The gain would be vastly reduced fuel consumption, less expense, sometimes no need to maintain a vehicle at all, and also longer periods of free time for family, household, education, leisure. because of the personal benefits, this city planner could expect that many people, landlords, and employers, would happily go along with the program of reassigning home/job places to individuals... rarely in direct swaps, but rather in a complex reshuffling.

      Now, the primary interest and benefit would be for lower income people or the presently unemployed. Having been poor, I know that this is a desirely concept, although one that the lifelong middle class might not see the appeal of. Employers and renters to the lower income demographic, however, would likely see the potential.

      I wrote about this a while back here:
      Blueprint For a Radical Democratic Platform

      by NewDirection on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 11:48:31 AM PDT

      •  this assumes...

        ...that you can just suddenly force-relocate huge masses of people.  

        My gut reaction to that, is, "time to dust off the Second Amendment."  And I think you'll find that 99% of people would feel the same way.  Even the poor in the inner cities will fight like hell to not have their communities broken up, torn asunder, and scattered to the proverbial four winds.  

        More reasonable: better development plans; infill; antisprawl; public transport; walkable neighborhoods; relocalization, etc.  Some of which may involve applying torque to developers, but better that than applying torque to the entire populations of metropolitan areas.  

        by G2geek on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 02:13:21 AM PDT

•  Insufficient poll options

  Not enough poll options. I live about 10 miles from work, and I've tried to find someone with my hours within a mile or so, and there aren't any. I feel I've done my part by only looking at jobs in a very close radius of my (suburban) home, and commuting by motorcycle 50% of the year.

  Plenty of us don't commute, and it has nothing to do with strangers. (Although, as a driver's ed instructor, there are damned few people I would willingly let drive me anywhere if I don't have a passenger brake:)

  by gmhowell on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 08:29:29 PM PDT

•  The computer technology

  for house and job swapping already exists, at least in the sense that getting the information into and back out of a computer fast enough is no problem.  You can't swap hotel rooms, much less houses, nearly as fast as a computer could match you to someplace new.  With commuting, the perfect solution means having your ride pull up and honk within seconds of when you decide you're ready to go.  Ideally it would almost be like waiting for an elevator.

  by david78209 on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 08:35:32 PM PDT

•  RideshareOnline.com

  http://www.rideshareonline.com/

  by raatz on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 09:53:34 PM PDT

•  car pool

  Create designated wait areas for persons looking for a ride.  Drivers in a hurry can pick up one of these persons up enabling them to use car pool lanes.

  by BradMajors on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 10:40:08 PM PDT

  •  yes, and...

    This is a zero-tech solution that's infinitely flexible.  However it does have security issues.

    Consider a robber dressed as an office worker.  Consider a possible nutcase who's out to do a carjacking, murder, hostage situation, etc.  All it takes is one such instance to scare off a lot of people.  

    So what you need at minimum, is a car-mountable camera that automatically transmits pictures to a central server, perhaps using cellular infrastructure already in place.  The driver would clip this to the sun visor and check on its little monitor screen to be sure it was picking up the entire back seat.

    Once you start doing this for thousands of cars in an urban area, you're using up a hell of a lot of bandwidth on the public networks.  That will necessarily become a limiting factor.  

    by G2geek on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 12:21:00 AM PDT

•  Lots of people in the Easy Bay do this

  to come to SF...but I'm not sure how they hook up. I think there are designated pickup spots or something.

  An interesting rule is that passengers are supposed to not speak unless spoken to.

  by peeder on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 10:47:00 PM PDT

  •  Just stand at any transbay bus stop

    people come by to get passengers so they can use the HOV lanes.  

    by sailmaker on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 11:38:32 PM PDT

    •  Does it have to be transbay only?

      Because there are a lot of bus stops that have 1 transbay line, like the F or whatever, and several non-transbay line.

      by jfern on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 01:14:57 AM PDT

      •  I've only seen it at transbay stops

        because people in cars want to use the HOV lanes to save time and money. It would be neat if there were ways to do it for other commutes.

        by sailmaker on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 09:29:36 AM PDT

•  Slugging

  We have slugging in the Washington DC area:

  Slugging is a term used to describe a unique form of commuting found in the Washington, DC area sometimes referred to as "Instant Carpooling" or "Casual Carpooling".   It's unique because people commuting into the city stop to pickup other passengers even though they are total strangers! However, slugging is a very organized system with its own set of rules, proper etiquette, and specific pickup and drop-off locations.

  The system of slugging is quite simple. A car needing additional passengers to meet the required 3- person high occupancy vehicle (HOV) minimum pulls up to one of the known slug lines. The driver usually positions the car so that the slugs are on the passenger side. The driver either displays a sign with the destination or simply lowers the passenger window, to call out the destination, such as "Pentagon," "L’Enfant Plaza," or "14th & New York." The slugs first in line for that particular destination then hop into the car, normally confirming the destination, and off they go.

  I don't know how easy it would be to encourage it elsewhere, but it seems that the precipitating factor was the creation of the HOV lanes which went a lot faster than any other lanes.

  by Helen in MD on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 10:53:53 PM PDT

•  And when we don't need drivers?

  The technology is not that far off (10 years max) to convert all cars to robots that drive themselves. We will all be passengers.  Combine that with a system like the one being discussed here and it doesn't even make sense to own a car.  When you need a car call for one, but don't worry about parking it.  It will just go on to pick up the next passenger(s) when it has dropped you off.  When you need another ride, call again.

  by Dale Read on Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 11:39:55 PM PDT

  •  won't happen.

    Cars w/o drivers won't happen.  The level of intelligence required to deal with unexpected situations and avoid accidents is too high.  Consider the fact that many humans with otherwise normal intelligence, are not able to retain their drivers' licenses as they get older, due to decline in reaction time and other variables (aside from visual acuity).  

    The best AIs we have right now are not much more intelligent than common frogs.  Getting from the "snail" stage to the "frog" stage of evolution was a big deal.  And Moore's Law be damned, we're ultimately up against Godel here.

    When we get AIs up to the level of higher mammals, for example dogs, that will be major news.  When we get them up to the level of primates, that will be even bigger.  

    The first civilian applications for near-human-level AIs will probably be in managing electric power grids, and serving as parallel systems to advise the operators of nuclear power reactors.  (They won't be direct-connected to critical reactor systems, but will advise humans who have actual control over the reactors.  There is no substitute for properly trained human operators in the control room.)  

    Note, quantum computing isn't going to solve this one either.  When a proposed system is being tested it will necessarily have to go through a "simulator" stage.  However, at that point, the processor running the "driver" sim, will develop nonlocal entanglements with the processor running the "route/course" sim, and the two will act in concert to stay within parameters, i.e. to minimize unfavorable outcomes during testing.  So you get your good test results and put them on the road, and still get accidents.  

    by G2geek on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 12:33:34 AM PDT

    •  It already has

      http://www.grandchallenge.org/

      So the vehicles that completed the grand challenge course are not ready for America's urban rush hour traffic.  That only means that great things don't happen overnight.  The people who made this happen will keep working on it and even if my estimate of 10 years turns out to be too optimistic -- it will happen.  In part because of the safety factor: no human can compete with a computer's reaction time once the computer has been programmed to react to everything it needs to react to.  Granted, that's a lot of programming in this case but I'm betting it can and will be done.  

      by Dale Read on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 08:54:56 AM PDT

      •  no, it hasn't.

        The design problems for autonomous military vehicles are entirely different from those for automobiles in civilian use.  

        Those military vehicles are not designed to replace combat infantry (except possibly in Rumsfeld's so called high tech army, ha).  They can't function in a close combat situation, nor will they be able to.  

        Driving in urban traffic is a problem-set that's more akin to close combat.

        And I don't care how fast your computer's reaction time is, it will still be subject to the limits of mass and inertia of the vehicle.  If the car ahead of you has a tire blowout, and you're following at computer-close distances (the proposals I've seen call for perhaps one car length of distance between vehicles, at 70 miles per hour), you're going to have a crash, and it's going to turn into a chain-reaction pile up.  

        Also consider trucks: the moving van with its low-density load and large surface area exposed to crosswinds, or the cement truck with 18 to 24 tons of fresh concrete onboard.  Those won't mix with autonomous cars, and will still require human operators.  What then, segregated freeways?  This lane for the people with the expensive new cars, that lane for "everyone else"...?  

        No thanks.  

        by G2geek on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 02:25:08 AM PDT

    •  Sure it will...

      Sure it will, it's just that robot drivers will only be allowed on special roads that have the number one cause of accidents and general unpredictability already banned (ie, human drivers will be absolutely forbidden from mixing with the robot drivers).

      by Maditude on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 09:40:55 PM PDT

      •  wonderful, another two-class system.

        These roads over here for people with the expensive new cars, those roads over there for everyone else.  

        No thanks.  

        by G2geek on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 02:15:58 AM PDT

•  operationalizing this...

  Let's first assume constraints to minimize the combinatorial overload on the system from having too many choices.  

  Etiquiette:  

  No radios except for traffic reports to help driver navigate.  (Anyone can have a radio with earphones if it's kept quiet.)
  No conversation except for navigation-related or safety-related.
  No eating, drinking, smoking, while in the car.  
  No intoxicated drivers or passengers, no exceptions.  
  (Note: etiquette rules that allow the driver to do whatever s/he wants but constrain the passengers, are an unacceptable concession to the "owner of property has rights above and beyond non-owners of property" meme, which ultimately leads to caste systems; therefore the same rules should apply to all.)

  Logistics:

  Instead of picking up and dropping off at the house, pick up and drop off at the nearest corner.  The system would give each passenger and each driver a one-time code number they would use to identify themselves verbally upon pickup.  At most these would be 10-digit numbers similar to telephone numbers, where the first three were the region, the next three were the locality within the region, and the last four were the specific trip.  

  The system should not rely on all participants having cellphones; there need to be means for people w/o cellphones to use it.  However this leads to a problem in the event that a driver is delayed at the last minute, e.g. has an accident a half mile away from a pickup.  

  There needs to be a solution for this, perhaps a continuously-running AM radio broadcast of delayed rides, similar to the continuous automated weather broadcasts on certain commercial radio frequencies.  For example, "Ride number ...123-456-7890... is cancelled due to ...involved in accident... at ... 7:52AM...."; the lists of these cases would run continuously and be updated continuously.  These broadcasts could be run on cities' local emergency broadcast frequencies, with the understanding that in the event of e.g. a natural disaster, the commuter broadcasts would be suspended to allow emergency-related items to proceed.

  Administrative issues:

  Payment for service:  Use the current IRS rate for mileage reimbursement, or use an approximated pricing scheme.

  Insurance:  auto insurers are eventually going to take an interest in this and possibly charge more for policies that cover organized carpool passengers in one's vehicle.  This would be a rational move since there are real additional risks involved, i.e. passenger injuries in accidents, additional mileage on local roads during peak traffic hours, roadside stops for pickups and dropoffs, etc.

  Liability on the part of the carpool service provider, i.e. the company that ran the computer infrastructure.  

  Circumstances that affect drivers need to be modified, notably last-minute requests by employers for working late on a given day.  Unions could reasonably include this in contracts: that any request for overtime must be made a day ahead rather than at the last minute.  In a very real way, an inconsiderate employer is not just causing inconvenience, but is placing the other passengers in danger if they are not able to find another way home on a given evening.  

  A piece of theory with significant implications:

  Game theory demonstrates clearly that single-iteration transactions (we do it once and never see each other again) are more prone to "defection" (If I can screw you and get away with it, I win); whereas repeat-iteration interactions (we do it regularly, we get to know each other) are more prone to "cooperation" (I won't screw you because I've gotten to know you, and in any case I gain more by playing by the rules).

  For those reasons it is preferable to create repeat-iteration interactions: keep the same people together as far as possible.  This in turn becomes more than "casual" carpooling.  It might include a more detailed database to allow people to search by lifestyle preferences (e.g. choice of radio station on the road, eat/drink/smoke preferences, conversation preferences, etc.).  That in turn becomes a de-facto dating service in disguise:-).  Which may not be such a bad idea!  

  Practical issues:

  A driver using a laptop in a car: if you think cellphone-related distraction accidents are a problem, you ain't seen nothin' yet.  So this one gets a huge NO NO NO, and if you don't like me saying it, wait until the auto insurance industry says it.  Drivers printing out itineraries before they leave, or getting them as audio directions files, might be OK.  

  People who are connected to the degree that using this would be intuitively easy, are also probably the same people who are telecommuting as much as they can.  Conversely, people who will benefit most from this, are also those who are not as heavily online; some of them probably don't even have computers much less internet service.  For this population we need something that works over the telephone, preferably in as many languages as possible.  

  (I just designed one that works over the telephone and was going to post it here, but methinks it better to avoid giving away business ideas my company could implement... if anyone's interested, post your email address and we'll talk.)  

  The entire issue of languages spoken, is also relevant.  In the San Francisco Bay Area we have something like 120 languages, and new immigrants who are working full time but haven't learned enough English to get by in general conversation (e.g. they work in situations where bilingual coworkers deal with situations that call for English).  Somehow these systems need to accommodate the majority of local languages, and need to enable drivers and passengers to specify language proficiency for more than one language (e.g. Cantonese with a bit of English and Spanish).  

  I could go on... but the point is that designing something like this to work properly is not an obvious or easy task.  Though, sooner or later, with gas prices on the rise and peak oil on the horizon, it will be done.  

  by G2geek on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 01:38:52 AM PDT

  •  I'm interested

    Here's my 'throw-away' e-mail address:
    [purplepugpuddin AT yahoo DOT com] , without the spaces and brackets.

    I don't have any programming expertise to add, but I could chip in a little seed money for a promising idea.  I do have a medical practice with plenty of little old ladies who don't drive, who'd love a system that didn't make them wait for a bus outside in the summer heat.

    I don't want a drive looking at a computer display unless the car is stopped, but maybe voice prompts like navigation systems already have.

    An employer can't always schedule overtime in advance, but if it's at the last minute he should pay the employee's taxi fare home, in cash or some sort of prepaid debit card that the employee can use as soon as he gets off work.

    by david78209 on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 08:52:01 AM PDT

    •  email sent

      Email sent to the address you posted; subject header is obvious.  Talk to you soon.  

      by G2geek on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 03:09:21 AM PDT

•  When I was in houston

  I took mass transit but there were people that would come by the bus stop to pick up additional people to take the car pool lane, I think they were called scabs, it was interesting but some of the people were really strange that I rode with.

  by Marshall Collins on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 09:16:18 PM PDT

•  I have a friend...

  ...at MIT graduate school who's working on precisely such a system, and systems like this, as part of his doctoral research.  He just got back from a trip to Spain to try and help a Spanish city do something like this for their bus system, i.e., have the city bus routes spontaneously redraw themselves depending on passenger's desired destinations and people needing to be picked up around the city.  Whether any American city would be so daring in the near future, I don't know.

  What worries me is anything that involves a camera in my car or a GPS transmitter or anything of that sort, unless I know I have complete control over whether it's active or not.  I just imagine the nightmare scenario of some uber-computer that Bush & company could tap into and find out where every car in the country was at a given time.

  by Mr Futomaki on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 09:41:00 PM PDT

  •  The camera's easy --

    you have complete control with a lens cap.  The GPS doesn't have anything as obvious, though making it simple and harmless to disconnect the power might do the trick.  

    Mobile phones have a similar worry -- even without GPS you can be placed to the tower you've connected to.

    I'm tickled to know that some programming whizzes are working on this.  I hope it'll be up and running before I'm too old to drive.

    by david78209 on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 10:51:09 PM PDT

•  Businesses should provide the service.

  Colleges already provide shuttle services to the surrounding neighborhoods. Often I just want to go to the grocery store, but either don't want to drive or don't want to give up my parking space which are few and far between. A shuttle service provided by grocery chains or strip malls would be a step in the right direction.

  by The Bond Company Stooge on Sun Apr 23, 2006 at 10:09:20 PM PDT

  •  build from zip car

    zip car (zipcar.com) already manages a car-sharing scheduling system, with dedicated parking spots throughout several major metro areas in the U.S.

    currently, cars must be returned to their original spot.  allowing cars to go back and forth would add significant complexity to the scheduling problem, but likely do-able.

    if businesses were given an incentive to cooperate with zip car to have a pilot car-pooling system, this would be a win-win.  Maybe Boston?  Any Kossacks know anyone in the MA DOT?

    by bribri on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 06:36:27 AM PDT

•  A similar concept already exists

  Check out the NuRide site. I think it does pretty much what you're talking about.

  by stoneji on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 09:51:14 AM PDT

  •  Some differences --

    It seems to require some advance planning, though perhaps not very long in advance.

    It's subsidized by some nice sponsors.  But any payment system is informal.

    It does have a nice "I don't want to ride with him" feature.  A government sponsored program might be able to imitate that, but maybe not.

    by david78209 on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 04:23:33 PM PDT

•  Already reality in SF Bay Area

  Some folks above have mentioned "casual carpooling" in the East Bay, where passengers wait in line at designated pickup spots (gas stations, bus stops, BART stations) for driver to pick them up so as to qualify for carpool lanes on the Bay Bridge to SF. Passengers are dropped off downtown, near the first bridge exit, and must then make their own way to their jobsites (although alternative dropoff sites can be negotiated). I used this method when I lived near Lake Merritt, it worked very well. There are unwritten rules - no passenger food or drink, don't yak away unless spoken to, be polite. Note that the passenger must use mass transit to get home again.

  Amazingly, in all the years (20?) this informal arrangement has been going on, I haven't heard of a single case of a participant being harmed by another participant. Amazing!

  The Bay Area has another great resource: RIDES for Bay Area Commuters. http://rideshare.511.org/
  You enter your home and work addresses, along with your work schedule, and the site matches you up with an appropriate carpool. Financial arangements are worked out within the carpool. As far as I know, no screening is done, but apparently safety has not surfaced as an issue. I suppose one must use common sense and not sign up with a group that seems to use an unsafe car or driver.

  I also used this service, to commute from San Leandro to SF, and it was not only a very efficient way to commute, but Bonus! I learned a lot about my new community from my car-pool pals, all of whom were longtime residents.

  511.org provides other commuting alternatives as well. Do other communities have a similar resource?

  by vulcangrrl on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 11:53:17 AM PDT

•  it might end up that way

  but what you're talking about is micro-transit systems. Instead of 50 or 150 anonymous people getting on the bus or train with one anonymous driver, you turn everyone into anonymous drivers.

  Somehow it seems less desirable than a tax and policy system for

  1. discouraging suburban sprawl

  2. discouraging green lot construction of business

  3. encouraging use of good, affordable, public transit

  4. encouraging people working and living in the same community

  5. encouraging locating business near existing transit

  6. encouraging employers to treat the people who work for them as people not machinery (i.e. people who have lives and need to work 9-5 not 8am till whenever).

  There are huge privacy concerns with cameras and GPS, as well as the computers that process all of it. Further, U.S. common law (if I recall my classes correctly) makes anyone who accepts payment for a carpool a "common carrier". That carries huge liabilities in case of accidents and for public accomodation.

  Finally, many insurance companies already have clauses disavowing coverage in their policies for people who accept payment, even in the form of gasoline, for carpools.

  by Dugius on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 12:50:19 PM PDT

  •  Yes, but...

    Privacy is a very reasonable concern, but don't you pretty much punt privacy while you're on public transportation, anyway?  Or even walking on a public street, or especially if you walk into a bank lobby.  Traveling in privacy used to be a luxury enjoyed only by the rich in their carriages.  We may have to slide back on that front.

    You're right that current laws pretty well block such a micro-transit system.  Precisely!!!  That's why the laws need to change!
    You'd need law changes to exempt drivers in such a program from being a common carrier -- perhaps creating a new 'commuter carrier' class that allows one round trip a day.  Car insurance regulations should require coverage, perhaps with a slight premium increase.  Four people commuting in one car shouldn't be more dangerous than if all four drove.  

    Getting cities to be more compact and getting people to use mass transit are worthy goals, but we haven't made much progress on those fronts in the U.S. in the last 40 years.  For a micro-transit system like this, all the heavy infrastructure is already in place.  You don't have to dig up any streets.  The internet, mobile phones, and wi-fi were the last pieces to fall into the puzzle.  Other than a good navigation-webcam-display gadget in each car that wants to participate, all we need are a well-debugged matching program, enabling laws, and public acceptance.  

    Thank you very much for the term
       MICRO-TRANSIT !
    I would argue that it's preferable to mass transit.  If micro-transit worked well, everybody could get door-to-door service.  I think that would beat walking to a bus stop or subway station and either waiting for the bus or planning around the bus schedule.  You wouldn't have a rich man's privacy, but you'd match his convenience.  

    I'd just as soon spend five minutes waiting for a ride and five extra minutes coming along while two other riders were picked up or dropped off, as spending ten minutes walking from work across a big parking lot to my car, and maybe a few more minutes in a (hot!) car waiting to get out of the end-of-shift traffic in the parking lot onto the road home.  

    by david78209 on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 04:00:00 PM PDT

    •  privacy and last 40 years

      I'm absolutely not willing to give up on my privacy and consider it the foremost civil liberty under attack. Walking down a public street is just another place where I expect to be free to go about my business un-assaulted by invasions into my liberty. This means being free to come and go without being "watched" or having my travel habits "recorded".

      As for the last 40 years, the reason we have suburban sprawl is because of tax and policies that promote it. The Feds subsidized the federal highways, didn't subsidize the trains (freight), and gave tax breaks for building new houses. Other governments give tax breaks to relocate businesses from urban locations to "exurbia" pulling suburban sprawl along like a slug's slime trail and destroying more farm and wilderness than just the one "incentivized" green lot.

      Now add to that the unwillingness of government to pay for mass transit, and in many cases the inept management of those transit systems.

      So instead of moving freight by train, we have more trucks guzzling fuel, clogging roads, polluting the air. We have more people traveling further to get to work. People who live in urban areas have to commute to the boonies by car because there's no trains or busses.

      Personally, I have absolutely no problem walking 2 blocks to catch a bus. I do it often. Sometimes I'll walk the 3/4 mile to get to the trains. Americans are too fat and lazy anyway, and getting out and walking or biking would help our healthcare crisis of diabetes and heart disease. But I suppose that's a digression.

      (There's also the whole consumerism impact of having overly large houses to consider in ruining the environment and increasing global warming for all of the excess fuels used in  heating the housing and making and transporting the goods for them. Perhaps another digression, but all inter-related IMHO.)

      I understand your point, and to my great regret what your talking about will probably come about in one form or another, along with your foreseen invasions of privacy. You're talking about a solution for a real symptom, I'm just saying I'd rather have a better solution for the root cause.

      by Dugius on Wed Apr 26, 2006 at 07:57:40 AM PDT

  •  Car pooling is a barter system

    Nothing wrong with that, but there's a very good reason money was 'invented' and came into use.  It lets you do business with someone who doesn't need what you have to barter.  

    by david78209 on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 04:05:32 PM PDT

•  Google has researched it.

  ...it's back burnered right now, but their "Google Rides" project was considering carpooling in addition to professional transportation companies.

  http://labs.google.com/...

  by skids on Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 03:02:37 PM PDT