Flexible carpooling is carpooling that is not arranged ahead of time, but instead makes use of designated meeting places. It seeks to replicate the informal "slug-lines" that form in Washington DC, Houston, and San Francisco, by establishing more formal locations for travelers to form carpools without advance contact.
The essence of the systems is the use of a meeting-place to form carpools, without any advance contact between the participants. For people wishing to carpool, going to a meeting place is a very low-effort method for getting into a carpool, compared with any other system that involves contacting potential riders or drivers in advance, and arranging the trip. The key is that other people are also coming to the meeting place, and there need to be sufficient people traveling from any one meeting-place to the common destination so that the waiting time to form a carpool is acceptable.
The Transportation Research Board is carrying out research to determine the feasibility of 'flexible carpooling to transit stations'. [1] Since fewer people are carpooling today than were thirty years ago, the federal government, as well as local governments and the Department of Defense, are trying to reverse the decline. [2]
It is estimated that San Francisco saves almost 1 million gallons of gasoline and associated emissions each year because of the operation of the informal flexible carpooling system. [3]
A high-occupancy vehicle lane is a restricted traffic lane reserved for the exclusive use of vehicles with a driver and at least one passenger, including carpools, vanpools, and transit buses. These restrictions may be only imposed during peak travel times or may apply at all times. There are different types of lanes: temporary or permanent lanes with concrete barriers, two-directional or reversible lanes, and exclusive, concurrent, or contraflow lanes working in peak periods.
Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. Regarding occupation, it is also colloquially called the journey to work. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular or often repeated travel between locations, even when not work-related. The modes of travel, time taken and distance traveled in commuting varies widely across the globe. Most people in least-developed countries continue to walk to work. The cheapest method of commuting after walking is usually by bicycle, so this is common in low-income countries but is also increasingly practised by people in wealthier countries for environmental and health reasons. In middle-income countries, motorcycle commuting is very common.
Private transport is the personal or individual use of transportation which are not available for use by the general public, where in theory the user can decide freely on the time and route of transit, using vehicles such as: private car, company car, bicycle, dicycle, self-balancing scooter, motorcycle, scooter, aircraft, boat, snowmobile, carriage, horse, etc., or recreational equipment such as roller skates, inline skates, sailboat, sailplane, skateboard etc.
Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves. Carpooling is considered a Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) service
A park and ride, also known as incentive parking or a commuter lot, is a parking lot with public transport connections that allows commuters and other people heading to city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to a bus, rail system, or carpool for the remainder of the journey. The vehicle is left in the parking lot during the day and retrieved when the owner returns. Park and rides are generally located in the suburbs of metropolitan areas or on the outer edges of large cities. A park and ride that only offers parking for meeting a carpool and not connections to public transport may also be called a park and pool.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) in Bryan/College Station, Texas is a transportation research agency in the United States. The institute was created in 1950, primarily in response to the needs of the Texas Highway Department. TTI is a state agency and a member of the Texas A&M University System.
Carsharing or car sharing or car clubs (UK) is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. It differs from traditional car rental in that the owners of the cars are often private individuals themselves, and the carsharing facilitator is generally distinct from the car owner. Carsharing is part of a larger trend of shared mobility.
Paratransit is the term used in North America, also known by other names such as community transport (UK), for transportation services that supplement fixed-route mass transit by providing individualized rides without fixed routes or timetables. Paratransit services may vary considerably on the degree of flexibility they provide their customers. At their simplest they may consist of a taxi or small bus that will run along a more or less defined route and then stop to pick up or discharge passengers on request. At the other end of the spectrum—fully demand responsive transport—the most flexible paratransit systems offer on-demand call-up door-to-door service from any origin to any destination in a service area. In addition to public transit agencies, paratransit services may be operated by community groups or not-for-profit organizations, and for-profit private companies or operators.
Slugging, also known as casual carpooling, is the practice of forming ad hoc, informal carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking. A driver picks up these non-paying passengers at key locations, as having these additional passengers means that the driver can qualify to use an HOV lane or enjoy toll reduction. While the practice is most common and most publicized in the congested Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, slugging also occurs in San Francisco, Houston, and other cities.
Vanpools or Vanpooling is an element of the transit system that allow groups of people to share the ride similar to a carpool, but on a larger scale with concurrent savings in fuel and vehicle operating costs and thus usually a lower cost to the rider. Vanpools have a lower operating and capital cost than most transit vehicles in the United States, but due to their relatively low capacity, vanpools often require subsidies comparable to conventional bus service.
The United States is serviced by a wide array of public transportation, including various forms of bus, rail, ferry, and sometimes, airline services. Most established public transit systems are located in central, urban areas where there is enough density and public demand to require public transportation. In more auto-centric suburban localities, public transit is normally, but not always, less frequent and less common. Most public transit services in the United States are either national, regional/commuter, or local, depending on the type of service. Sometimes "public transportation" in the United States is an umbrella term used synonymously with "alternative transportation", meaning any form of mobility that excludes driving alone by automobile. This can sometimes include carpooling, vanpooling, on-demand mobility, infrastructure that is oriented toward bicycles, and paratransit service.
Shared transport or shared mobility is a transportation system where travelers share a vehicle either simultaneously as a group or over time as personal rental, and in the process share the cost of the journey, thus creating a hybrid between private vehicle use and mass or public transport. It is a transportation strategy that allows users to access transportation services on an as-needed basis. Shared mobility is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of transportation modes including carsharing, Bicycle-sharing systems, ridesharing companies, carpools, and microtransit.
Zimride by Enterprise Holdings was an American carpool program that matched inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It was offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. The company was founded in May 2007. After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and had partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar.
Carma Technology Corporation is a real-time transportation technology company headquartered in Cork, Ireland. Its flagship product, Carma Carpooling, matches users with nearby commuters and enables them to share the cost of driving. Carma also has offices in San Francisco, California and Austin, Texas.
RideShare Delaware is DART First State's program to reduce traffic and encourage alternative transportation arrangements. The program is supported by state and federal funds as part of Delaware's efforts to maintain air quality. RideShare works in partnership with local and regional agencies towards meeting Federal Air Quality Standards. It helps form both carpools and vanpools. It also offers special programs for students and Delaware employers.
A ridesharing company is a company that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire that, unlike taxis, cannot legally be hailed from the street.
Mobility as a service (MaaS) is a type of service that, through a joint digital channel, enables users to plan, book, and pay for multiple types of mobility services. The concept describes a shift away from personally-owned modes of transportation and towards mobility provided as a service. This is enabled by combining transportation services from public and private transportation providers through a unified gateway that creates and manages the trip, which users can pay for with a single account. Users can pay per trip or a monthly fee for a limited distance. The key concept behind MaaS is to offer travelers mobility solutions based on their travel needs.
Microtransit is a form of bus demand responsive transport vehicle for hire. This transit service offers a highly flexible routing and/or highly flexible scheduling of minibus vehicles shared with other passengers. Microtransit providers build routes ad-hoc exclusively to match only each demand (trip) and supply and to extend the efficiency and accessibility of the transit service. Possible pick-up/drop-off stops are restricted, and transit can be provided as a stop-to-stop service or a curb-to-curb service.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to public transport:
Ride sharing networks face issues of user privacy like other online platforms do. Concerns surrounding the apps include the security of financial details, and privacy of personal details and location. Privacy concerns can also rise during the ride as some drivers choose to use passenger facing cameras for their own security. As the use of ride sharing services become more widespread so do the privacy issues associated with them.
