Develop a car pooling database package for local councils

First, a quick survey of the sites that are out there: * craigslist: basic, but useful because of the volume of adverts * ridester.com: has decent personal descriptions; few users * alternetrides.com: clucky. but has features to limit by geography * GishiGo.com: few users. small post fee. pretty detailed search * erideshare - Emphasizes commuter carpools, gets shared listings from craigslist * carpoolworld.com - Mapping features, mostly commuters posting, no personal descriptions * couchsurfing.org is useful for finding rideshare * Zimride.com: leverages social network through Facebook. decent geographic search. * www.goloco.org - leverages social network through Facebook. decent geographic search. * pathwayintelligence.com: Offers "EnRoute" for organizations — has nice geographic search functions (will find carpools that pass by your location, for example — and decent profile rating functions) * goosenetworks.com: offer a multi-modal trip planner for organizations/campuses — how can employees/students, etc. travel by carpool, campus shuttle, fixed-route transportation, or bike? * avego.com: "Real-time carpooling" for iPhone. Aimed mainly around commute travel. Includes profiles. As you can see there are a number of offerings out there experimenting with different approaches. Profiles and ratings are part of a few of these. I think the problem with online rideshare is probably not a lack of available features, but: * the marginal cost of driving alone is still quite low so there's little incentive (gas is actually pretty cheap; the fixed costs — purchase, insurance, registration, regular maintenance — is much more) * these sites are difficult to market (see above) * no one's created a sustainable business model for the sites that doesn't involve institutional subscriptions * the many options available fragments the market. As such, so site (besides craigslist) is able to achieve a critical mass of posts to be truly useful to drivers and passengers on a national basis. Institutionally-focused programs can achieve this, however. Here's what I think is needed: * Increase in the marginal cost of drive-alone travel. (There were a lot of transportation behavior changes happening when gas costs spiked.) * Common data standard for describing trips with available capacity. I participated a bit in brainstorming on how to do this with TripML (Trip markup language): http://headwayblog.com/wiki/index.php?title=TripML The idea with TripML is that it is in the mutual interest of all carpooling sites that they offer more options to become more useful to people. A common data standard would allow them to exchange information. This gets at what I think is really, deeply needed, is a search engine-like approach to ridematching — like how Google indexes the entire web to make information from millions of sources easy to find — or even how Google Maps (maps.google.com) presents information from many different sources (including the transit data that my company provides to them). * Creative market wedges and tie-in marketing. Localized/institutional programs succeed because they are promoted throughout and by the organization(s). More of this, expanding outward, is one way to start. TransitCamp is a useful model for building collaboration around these sorts of projects. (http://barcamp.org/TransitCampBayArea)

Great Please open source this and use the Traidmark.org business structure:) http://www.WEBiversity.org plans to generate suplus funds that can then be donated and use to fund other innovative charitable work http://www.Traidmark.org explains more. What other open source creative commons public services would you like to make (either with or without us)? List your requests at http://www.UGCunion.org www.FREEtraid.org Donate to charity and receive more than you gave in free gifts as a reward. Everyone gains. We are setting up locations in which to set up social enterprise to facilitate this. Would you like to get involved? www.playgroundgames.org We are finding other people who are interested in producing a philanthropic activity that is based around play and benefits everyone. Are you a, creative, linguist, programmer, producer, broadcaster, entrepneur wanting to take part in an exciting project that does 'good' by entertaining and educating using the power of the web? If so check out Playgroundgames.org and join in by adding to the Wiki. www.ugcunion.org Come to the next event or make your own using creative skills to benefit humanity. UGCunion is collaboration where people like you are using their skills to put on fun events that entertain and empower others using the creative arts. www.traidmark.org Should trade profit everyone? Yes. Traidmark represents a new business structure that was created as a way for profits to be used to fund innovation and progress for the benefit of humanity. This is done by donating Net profit to innovative charitable/research organisations and stating the percentage donated clearly for consumer clarity. www.mustart.org We put on interactive events that include everyone. Why not come to the next event or make your own. Regards Ed Whyman Creative Producer www.whymandesign.com

Hello Check this out: http://www.letscarpool.com.au/ As you can see the uptake hasn't been terrific (hint: if you're Sydney-based try searching for someone in your own neighbourhood). Several weeks ago I tried to contact the developer of this site to see what had happened to it but he hasn't replied. Devloping the website is the easy bit. Getting people to change their behaviours is the hardest thing. In NW Sydney where I work there are important socio-cultural factors which influence the cars people choose, the way they use those vehicles and so on. Robyn Dowling, a human geographer at Macquarie has done some preliminary research into this issue e.g. her article 'Cultures of mothering and car use in suburban Sydney: a preliminary investigation'. I fear that a project which doesn't take account of these behavioural factors and biases is doomed to failure. But these cultural practices are not well-understood so responding effectively to them is a real challenge. Sorry to sound so gloomy but on this issue, I guess I am.

Hi Darren, All the technical stuff can be dealt with at the camp and with my web development experience I would see this as a project that could be developer to a great extent over the camp weekend. From where I see it. I think it could be a stand alone site that could be used by all states by I definitely think that there need to be a person or a group of persons taking the lead to make sure the site is monitored and promoted. I'm not sure if this could be more easily done by a council or by a group or independent activists and/or social innovators/entrepreneurs. Once a site like this is up and running it should not require a major IT input for its maintenance. For the camp, in terms of ownership, we are referring to the person that comes with the idea and that wants to be in the group that takes the idea forward and discuss it with the team creating the software during the weekend of the camp. Do you think you could be in that role? Thanks, Raul