Carpooling is a great way to cut both your transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, and your gasoline spending. You probably associate it most with commuting to and from work: a few co-workers get together and agree to share costs (and the headaches of driving in rush hour traffic). But what about trips into town for a museum visit, or a ballgame, or shopping? More than likely, you’ll make those trips alone… and that adds up to a lot of cars heading in the same direction. Up to 85% of car trips, in fact, involve just one person.
A number of services have stepped up to try and stem that tide of solo drivers. This is helpful, but it also makes ride sharing a bit like internet dating: you won’t find out that your ride partner wants to share his opinions about death panels loudly and frequently, and have you pay for a full tank of gas, until you make the trip…
Bay Area start-up ZoomPool aims to not only make carpooling more convenient, but also more compatible. Users can pool up not only by destination, but by preferences. So, if you want to share a ride to a Giants game with a non-smoker who doesn’t like to gab, you can make that request. ZoomPool also takes arguing over costs out of the equation by charging riders $.20/mile (for a maximum of three riders to prevent profiteering), and then paying that to the driver. Finally, if you want to make sure your driver doesn’t have a string of DUI arrests or other safety violations, you can limit your search to “Certified” members, who pay a small fee for background checks.
It’s an intriguing concept. While ZoomPool only operates in the Bay Area at this point, we could see demand for such a service springing up in many places…
via the Santa Cruz Sentinel
September 17th, 2009 - 3:29 pm
Hi, Jeff – thanks for the great article – I’m really glad to see that you get the benefit of what we are doing to help folks have great ridesharing experiences.
One thing that needs clarification: we do not operate just in the Bay area. The CA Bay area was our initial focus until we developed our SmartBadge technology for event organizers. This lets nationwide event planners and attendees use our service instantly. Even with a limited number of participants, folks going to the same address on the same date and time can use our application nationwide!
So when an event organizer ZoomPools their event and the attendee hits our SmartBadge, our trip page opens automatically with all the trip parameters filled in. How cool is that! And when they post the trip, we automatically email them as soon as a match is made. No need to keep checking back.
The end result is ZoomPool members can share a ride with like-minded event attendees and make a new friend while they save money and parking headaches.
Announcement about our partnership with Eventbrite for nationwide events will be out next week!
September 17th, 2009 - 4:25 pm
I recently conducted a training seminar (http://www.tinyurl.com/Executalk) and implemented ZoomPool for Events carpooling option for my registrants. One of the things I like about ZoomPool is that not only is it green and economical for event attendees, it’s promotes a safe, comfortable social/community option for one of the most tedious and inconvenient aspects of an otherwise great event– “how do I get there?”
September 17th, 2009 - 8:05 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Donna… good to know!
Kurt, thanks for sharing your experience…