Canberra carpooling project progress
Last August I blogged about some ideas for running a carpooling project here in Canberra. Idea died off after I looked around and saw several other sites already up and running and although I believed I could have implemented a better solution couldn’t see the point in competing. However recently I decided to revive that idea and have been working in the background (behind the million other things I’ve been busy with lately). Couple of weeks ago I had an idea:
I’m thinking web-based car pooling management will never work. I’ll just give out my phone number & coord myself (original tweet)
But what would I know? Sure, I intend to be a user of the system - but how many carpooling users would have the same requirements of a carpooling system (and by system I don’t mean a website but the entire interaction of people, cars, locations, routes and how it all works).
So in light of today’s article on News.com.au about carpooling Drivers don’t care for sharing I’m revealing that I am finalising a draft of a survey (which I intend to have peer reviewed in the Twittersphere shortly) that will be published on Survey Monkey or Go Fetch! with the primary promotion of the survey via a leaflet drop in Gungahlin.
If this goes the way that I’m anticipating where it’s discovered that simply throwing a website on the Internet and expecting people to find it and use it does not work for carpooling then it’s going to require a fair bit of hands-on involvement to run the system - via SMS, phone, email or a combination of those with a website depending on how the user feedback informs the system design phase.
Some of the ideas I have and will be putting out for comment in the survey include pick-up points, pick-up along routes, handling no-show drivers or passengers, how fuel “donations” work … even right down to matching drivers and passengers with similar musical tastes or those who prefer listening to talk-back radio on the drive into work. Even matching up people who prefer listening to the same volume of music in the car. All just ideas, but if people like where this is going then this will be one of the most fully featured carpooling systems ever. Just keep in mind that there may not even be a website involved in implementing this system … although at the very least there will be an information page or wiki introducing people to the system etc.
Then again … maybe people just aren’t interested, regardless of how easy, how safe, how robust the system is.
So learning from (one of) the mistakes of other projects where you can’t make a site like this work globally or even nationally I’m going to focus this initiative not just on Canberra but on Gungahlin. If the initial concept works out then we can expand it to whole of Canberra.
UPDATE: Also, just found this interesting discussion on carpooling on The Daily Telegraph blogs, incited by Garth Montgomery.
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June 12th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Also, one of the objectives of this system is that it be active … rather than passengers putting up their details, drivers putting up their details, and leaving it for the website to match them up. That is a totally passive approach and struggles to build up the critical mass needed to make the system attractive to both drivers and passengers.
Whereas with an active system there are people (me) behind it actively hooking up passengers with drivers, using my networks and connections and other channels to bridge that gap. Yes, hard work - but if you’re going to bother embarking on a project like this then might as well do it in a way that has a chance of success.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I, personally, don’t think a passive web service for this wouldn’t work; simply because I don’t think that people will willingly sign up for a ride with a complete stranger.
Maybe the key functionality you could use to get this to work would be mobile technology. Example - the system could monitor who’s responsible for driving this week, one carpooler could send an SMS to the system saying they don’t need a lift today and the system will then notify that day/week’s driver.
Another example could be that the driver could send an SMS saying he may be 5 minutes late, and then the system could send an SMS out to all the carpoolers.
Good luck with the project!
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Carpooling works already amongst friends and collegues. But carpooling with total strangers who got my details from a website or to relying on a website to match up people to card share - no thanks. Chris
September 24th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Found your post from a google of ‘carpool canberra’. I’m not sure what ‘other sites already up’ you found that discouraged you.. they certainly didn’t turn up on the first google page, and who looks beyond the first 10 results? or how often?
I’ve been toying with the idea of setting a passive site up on my company’s intranet for a while - there are a lot of people who car pool already and knowing everybody works for the same place eliminates most of the fear factor mentioned by chris regarding strangers over the internet, which is understandable.
I’m pretty confident it would have some uptake at work because everybody is going to the same place every day, and mostly arriving / leaving within about a 2 hr window morning and night. I certainly didn’t think as far as matching people with the same music volume taste
are people really that picky??
Anyway the few sites that did come up in the google search were trash, leaving me to think that there is still a niche to be filled here. Especially if it got promotion among particular businesses - and all that takes is one person to post it on internal bulletin boards.
I’ll have to keep an eye on your plans Nathanael!
September 25th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Definitely, carpooling is one of those things that sounds like an idea that requires a large and wide network of users to be feasible. But really, it’s an idea that in fact might work better (and more easily) on a smaller destination/workplace based scale. The website aspect would go more like this: Type in the name of my workplace or destination… ‘are there any carpooling groups listed?’ If not, ‘I might start one’. If yes, setup my free account and apply to be included in that carpooling group… and so on. You get the drift. Your details are only shared on a much smaller scale. In some cases the existence of a group might only be shared by word of mouth, on the website it remains hidden. The main purpose of the website is as a tool for those people to coordinate themselves and help with route planning.