On the Monday after the conference I was in San Francisco and I went to a popular casual carpooling pick-up point (College and Claremont in Oakland) to see how things are going.

I was there for about an hour and a half, from 7 am to 8:30 am.  In this time:

• 49 carpools formed
• 112 riders got rides
• 50% (exactly) of riders were female
• the line grew to more than 20 people at some times
• the longest anyone waited for a ride was 11 minutes
• drivers took more riders than they 'needed' to get the HOV 3 benefit:  (many took three riders instead of the required two).
• the average people per vehicle was 3.3

Not one of these rides was pre-arranged.  While most of these people will have used the system before, they wouldn't say that they 'know' the other people in the line or in the cars they get into.

We have developed a research proposal to determine exactly what it would take to achieve the impact of this system in a new location.  We are seeking funds for the research, and once we have the funds we will want locations.  Please contact me if you have funds, or if you have a location that would be interested.

We call the casual carpooling a 'flexible carpooling' system.  Flexible as to what time you participate, or whether you participate at all, and flexible as to whether you drive or ride, flexible without you needing to pre-arrange with the system what you are going to do.  It is our hypothesis that this is the essence of why the casual carpooling (and the sluglines in Washington DC) work, and have worked for 30 years with minimal intervention.

For more on our flexible carpooling ideas, here are our websites:

www.flexiblecarpooling.org

www.hoverport.org

www.lesscarsinnewyork.com

www.tripconvergence.com

-Paul