Picking up Nickels

Monday, August 28, 2006

Use Less Gasoline: Find a Carpool Online

Even with skyrocketing gasoline costs, American thirst for gasoline continues to increase. Although I see the media hyping efficient hybrid cars and alternative fuel sources, I wanted to find out more about an old-fashioned way to conserve fuel: carpooling.

I remember my father carpooling to work with a couple of co-workers during the oil crisis in the 1970's. His carpool was created when a few people signed a sheet of paper on a bulletin board at work. I was wondering what kind of resources were out there today for someone to find a carpool match.

I found two web sites of interest:

  • eRideShare.com
  • eRideShare.com is a free service for "connecting commuters, or travelers going the same way" for residents of the United States and Canada. It allows potential carpoolers to meet in person via Meetup.com and also shares rideshare listings with Craigslist.
  • Carpoolworld.com
  • Carpoolworld.com is also a free service for finding a carpool in your area. It is a carpool matching site for pretty much any country in the world, but its web site is less polished than eRideShare.com.
Factoid from eRideShare.com:

"A forty mile total daily commute costs about $2600 per year, estimated as of 2003. Ridesharing with one other person can save you $1300. Double the figure for an eighty mile total daily commute."

I've never made an online "carpool connection", but it is an interesting concept. It might be worth looking into when I have a long commute to a client site some day.

1 Comments:

  • Thanks for making those resources available to us. I've compiled a list of various online carpool services on the Rideshare Directory. You should also check out some of the new web 2.0 inspired projects out there. Our crew recently unveiled a new site Ridester that fixes some of the problems with those older rideshare sites.

    By Blogger Jake, at 10/1/06, 5:54 AM  

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