Projects
From dynamicridesharing.org
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Dynamic Ridesharing Projects, Past, Current and Proposed
Current and past projects are limited to those that produced at least field trials, and meet our criteria for "dynamic." For now, our simplified criterion is whether matches can be made via cell phone.
See below for other systems that have been developed but not put into operation.
Other ridesharing services (not dynamic) are here.
In (rough) chronological order...
Past
Los Angeles Smart Traveler, Los Angeles, California, USA, ~1993.
Bellevue Smart Traveler, Bellevue, Washington, USA, ~1993.
Seattle Smart Traveler, Seattle, Washington, USA, ~1993.
Sacramento-area Real-time Rideshare Matching, Sacramento, California, USA, 1995.
Easy Share, Sydney, Australia, ~1998.
M21, Stuttgart, Germany, 2001. Internet and automated telephone systems, operated to/from a suburban Daimler design center with approximately 6000 employees. Included a guaranteed ride home (a company car would be provided). In 2001 there were about 500 registered users. On average there were about 20-30 users on any given day (approximately 15 car pools). Project costs: approximately €10 M ($8.5 M in 2000). The project was expanded in 2002 to another site with approximately 800 users; usage remained at about 15 car pools per day. The project was discontinued in 2002 or 2003 [check]. more
TECAPSY, Alicante, Spain, ~2001.
Socialtraffic "Easy-Rider", Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005. A collaboration between government agencies [which?], ________ [social entrepreneur(s)?], and a cell phone company [which?], using the Ecolane Dynamic Carpool system. A Flash demo of the application (still available on the wayback machine) indicates that each participating driver was given a GPS-enabled PDA (personal digital assistant) with a Java application user interface for ride matching. The pilot enrolled 300 [check] participants [riders? drivers?]. Incentives: none. Use/success: low [details?].
Ride Now!, Alameda County, California, USA, 2005-6. Web and IVR interfaces to an "assigned match" system – users did not choose their rideshare partners – analogous to casual carpooling. Three efforts to implement, each focused on a single destination: (1) downtown San Francisco (parallel to existing casual carpool system); (2) a transit station (where participants could get a somewhat scarce parking space whether or not they were matched); and (3) a transit station (where participants would get half-price parking whether or not they were matched). Included a guaranteed ride home (by taxi) if a rider could not find a driver in the afternoon. An online ridematch simulation is available. more
Goose Express, Beta test, Seattle-Bellevue, Washington, September 2006-January 2007; Washington State Department of Transportation partnership, August 2007-August 2008. In the beta test, Microsoft employees living in the downtown Seattle area were eligible to use an SMS-based version of Goose Networks' ridematching service at no cost. Incentives – $10 credit upon registration, $10 upon first match, etc. – were offered. In the Washington State partnership, Goose Networks provided a free service to help commuters plan one-way, ad hoc carpools online or via SMS text message. more
Zypsy, Bay Area, 2006-7. "Mobile bulletin board" – SMS-based version of Craigslist. Did not get to critical mass ("Hard to get traction due to the classic chicken-and-egg problem: Ride sharers do not sign-up due to the lack of riders, and riders do not sign-up due to the lack of sharers"). This note from one of the founders is a good description of the project and their efforts to get to critical mass.
Current
Carriva/eNotions [1], [2] (German). Translation provided by Carriva: Drivers and passengers can very easily and quickly form ride share opportunities “on the spur of the moment”. Employees at Frankfurt Airport are testing the system. As of January 2009, there are slightly more than 1000 members; there are 25 to 30 successful matches per day. More
Covoiturage, Paris, France, 2008. One of the three major cellphone operators in France, SFR, has created a dynamic ride sharing service for 350,000 students from 28 campus in the Paris region. The aim of the service is to provide the students with home-to-school trips and promote “sustainable mobility”. The service is available through the website http://covoiturage-campus.com and from mobile phones. Students can find passengers or a driver at any time from their cellphones. Available via Vodafone Live! for SFR's mobile customers, the service will be fully accessible to all cellphone users starting mid-February 2008. For Vodafone/SFR customers, the system determines their location by trilaterating the cell-tower locations; other customers must specify their starting point.
Carticipate is an iPhone application. Mention in New York Times article.
Avego/Eirlift [3] [4] Mapflow, Dublin, Ireland. Avego. Apple iPhone client for dynamic ridesharing. New York Times article. Eirlift. Dynamic ridesharing infrastructure. Drivers use a GPS navigation device (initial pilot tests used TomTom) or other mobile client (e.g., iPhone), which announces potential riders along their route. Drivers accept riders via touchscreen. Riders can make requests with any cell phone. more
Proposed
Carpool4Cash [5] Marin County, California. Proposal by Jim Fox, co-author of WordStar (of which those of a certain age will have fond memories).
Ecolane Dynamic Carpool [6] This is the dynamic ridesharing system that was used in the Socialtraffic "Easy Rider" pilot project at the Amsterdam airport.
RideGrid [7] Dynamic ridesharing with a cell-phone application user interface program. A QuickTime video demo of the cell phone interface is available.
Hoverport [8] Physically-based system (using park-and-ride lots), similar to casual carpooling. Matches are made in first-come order as riders and passengers arrive at the satellite lots. For the afternoon rides, an intermediate lot is proposed, where passengers would be able to change to vehicles heading to the lot that they used in the morning. A backup/guaranteed ride service is also proposed.
Rideclub Victoria, British Columbia. [9] Implementation of casual carpooling, except that on-line registration is required. Registered participants will identify one another with cards/placards.
Aktalita [10] Guadalajara, Mexico. "Here in the developing world, we have terrible public transport in many places, few alternate routes, and tremendous need." Cellphone midlet – seamless operation between Web and lowest end cellphone with Java 2 mobile edition capability (~$50). "We also store all the public transit routes in an area and do compound matching... So a driver from an airport to home that crosses, say, a light train line going to the passenger's destination will compound match with a passenger's request." more
Piggyback [11] Cellphone application developed for Google's new "Android" platform (cell-phone operating system) – one of 20 second-round winners (August 2008) in Google's "Android Developer Challenge" contest for new cellphone-based applications. more
The MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory, in partnership with the Provincia di Brescia - Italy - is developing a sustainable ride-sharing system for youth that utilizes wearable media. email
Idea Exchange
New (or old) ideas for dynamic ridesharing. We'll use the discussion tab of the Idea Exchange page to vet various thoughts, and eventually summarize them on the page itself.
