Idea for car pool website
I bought a new car last week; well not new - it’s a 2002 Mini Cooper S. Has only done 55,000 kms, and I’m thinking I don’t want to rack up 27,000 kms per year like I was with my Subaru Liberty because I don’t want have to have to sell it within a couple of years.
Anyway - I’m getting distracted … but basically, I’ve decided to make an effort to catch the bus as much as possible. It’s a bit hard considering I frequently have to go out during work time to attend client meetings etc and I can’t always plan those the day before, but when I’m certain I won’t need the car then I’ll try and catch the bus (if the bus turns up and it’s not raining).
I’m still getting distracted. Anyway, basically, on the way down to the bus stop this morning I was thinking about how I could minimise the kms I rack up in the Mini without having to resort to public transport.
Yep, you guessed it - another project! Scribbled on the back of the yellow PIN enveloped I got yesterday for forgetting to move my car after parking out the front of work as I was running late for a meeting.
How does it work?
Well there’s two main types of people who would be interested in this service:
- People who are happy to take passengers in their car
- People who want a lift into work
And there will be people, like myself, who will be a blend of both - take my car some days, get a lift in on other days.
The aim of the site would obviously be to match up people who can take passengers with people who need a lift in.
So you would provide your basic profile, indicate what type of user you are (car owner, passenger, both) and then we need to collect some geo data to perform the matching. Easiest would probably be just tagging.
So I live in Amaroo. I work in Civic. When I drive in I go through Mitchell, Watson, Hackett, Ainslie, Dickson and Reid. Therefore I can pick up passengers from any of those locations. I would also indicate what time I leave for work, what time I arrive at work, what days I don’t drive and if I expect contributions to fuel and parking.
The system would then be able to match up drivers with passengers based on the days of the week & time schedule and geo data and make recommendations. If some drivers only want to drive in on Mondays and Tuesdays then the system would make multiple recommendations for passengers to use multiple drivers.
The system would track how many spare seats you have (represented by car seat icons) and when your car is full. If you find a suitable car pooling arrangement then the system would stop sending you recommendations.
If a driver can’t make a regular date then they would advise the site and it would send out an SMS notification. Also, drivers and passengers could opt for full SMS notifications which would then send them a message every day telling them what their driving/lift arrangements for the day were. Drivers would also be able to view a travel itinerary with addresses of passengers along the route.
Anyway - that’s how far I’ve got so far and how much I could fit on the back of that envelope … any suggestions? Useful? Rubbish? Want to build it for me? 
I usually drive in by myself. When I’m waiting at the bus stop, most of the cars I see drive past only have one occupant. I’m sure if it was easy and convenient to make car pooling arrangements that people would do it? It can get messy manually organising these things, when people forget who to pick up or forget they’re being picked up or forget to tell the drive they’re going on holidays etc - this site could simply those aspects and increase the number of people you have to choose from.
I think it’s a pretty good idea! Unfortunately I’m so busy and so behind on so much other stuff that I can’t even entertain the thought of developing it.
August 18th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Nathaniel,
You’ve put a lot of thought into how it might work. I think there’s a need and also a market for it.
- Aurelius
August 18th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
[...] Tonight, Mick sent me an email telling me someone else had had the same idea. Have a read of what Nathaniel has had to say about it and give him feedback. Because he’s clearly thought about it a lot more than me, and even has some idea how it might work. [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Thanks “Aurelius”; I had another look last night and there are actually a couple of Aussie sites that do carpooling - neither seemed particularly innovative, neither I’ve heard of previously, and one I had to register and pay a $25 fee just to see what it was capable of (which I didn’t)!
If something like this is going to be successful then it needs to be promoted - you can’t just stick a site out there and hope people stumble upon it. People don’t seem to understand that publishing a website on the Internet doesn’t mean everyone or anyone for that matter is ever going to visit it, let alone the specific audience you’re trying to attract.
Problem is, that sort of advertising and promotion costs money - so my approach would be to focus the scope and therefore promotion to just Canberra (at least initially) and make it work locally, establish the brand - then expand. Funding is definitely a problem though … it has to be a free or low cost service, or subsidised through sponsorship … but who would sponsor such an initiative? Not the petrol companies, that’s for sure
August 20th, 2007 at 4:37 am
A few years back i designed a site that was specifically for carpooling. It was a great idea and was fun to design + develop.
The only thing is that it fell over. I have no idea why because just after finishing that project i left the company.
Its a good idea but it definately needs some decent $$$ backing and maybe meeting with local councils for some support considering you will be reducing traffic congestion and pollution!
go for it i reckon
February 14th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I think the idea has merit. I disagree that it would take $$ for marketing.
The best marketing is word-of-mouth, and these days all it takes is for a viral email to get sent around a few .gov.au’s.
Another approach you might take is to create a facebook application (and/or supporting website).
There’s also a recent US TV series “Carpoolers” which shows how it can be fun. Once that airs over here, I think it will get the idea into people’s minds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpoolers
Grant.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Nathanael I believe there are a couple of sites that already offer this service; i’m not quite sure the names of them of the top of my head. If I find them, i’ll come back post the urls.
It’s a great idea, but I definitely think it would need to be really region/city focused at first. It’s really hard to launch a website that offers such a services when you’ve only got a handful of users at first.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Absolutely - nothing worse than some big international site trying to cover an overseas city with no understanding of how that city works and just leaving it all to the user to set it up.
There is a site I’ve registered with to testing it, http://www.pickuppal.com but so far no one wants a ride with me so I can’t test it in practice. But once again - international site trying to come in here and just doesn’t get it. It’s not smart.
July 7th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
How have you done with this?
Your thought are good, I would like you to take it one step further. Make the software available for others to have of different website. For example; their are small community groups that could personalise this and make it grass roots driven.
Could this be done, well I not sure, I know the larger websites just don’t work.
Good luck. don’t give up.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Thanks Davo - yep I’m hoping to get some support behind this via Project Australia’s new Ideas Bank initiative:
Proposed carpooling system feasibility assessment
It’s currently the highest voted proposal on the site
August 13th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Have now come across this. See my prior email.
Your idea sounds very high tech - I started a car pooling site at my work (failed miserably due to lack of interest) which was just a spreadsheet on a share drive, where drivers and passengers would log their proposed trips - it was then up to one person to contact the other when they saw the match. I gouped the drives into approaches to the city. So in Newcastle, there are only 6 major roads coming into the CBD - some come from 50 km away, but if you put your home suburb and nominate the approach, other people can work out what suburbs you would be passing through and what time you would be there.
I think having the site do the matching is a great idea, but a lower tech option is to have the site be just a way for people to find other people travelling the same direction as them on a regular basis, and just let them work out the details between themselves. I think email is a pretty non threatening way to do this - people seem pretty comfortable emailing people they don’t know - it is not like someone is going to ring them.
I didn’t know about the carpooling show referred to above - this could help.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Hi,
we have recently launched a new free online map-based carpooling service for Australia.
Your opinion and comments are very welcome as well as enquiries regarding possible implementation of this service for other countries (or organisations/corporates).
The address is http://www.carpoolone.com.au/
Thanks
Ginni
P.S. a bit off topic, but perhaps still handy might be http://www.motorcyclefuelconsumption.com/ guide for motorcycle fuel consumption figures that are usually missing in the factory specs.