Sites help cummuters pool their rides

By Andrew Serba

When environmental engineer Kristin Pouw searches the Internet for people who live close to her, are open minded and about her age, it is not love she is after; she already has a boyfriend. She is looking to share a ride to work.

“I can’t justify being the sole commuter in a car,” she said. “It’s environmentally and socially irresponsible.”

Carpooling allows Pouw to save money and the environment while cutting down on the wear and tear of her car. At the same time, she can save time en route to her job in Mississauga. She said taking public transit would cost her an extra hour and 15 minutes at the beginning and end of each day.

While carpooling and ride-sharing websites have gained in popularity, a legal challenge has pointed out that many carpools are technically breaking the law in Ontario. A ruling by the Ontario Transportation Board found that the popular ride-sharing site PickupPal broke the law by facilitating a rideshare across municipal boundaries. PickupPal was ordered to stop its Ontario operations.

It has sent its members an e-mail telling them that for a carpool to be legal in Ontario its members must ride with the same person each day; they must not cross municipal boundaries; they must travel from home to work only without money changing hands more than once a week.

Eric Dewhirst, PickupPal’s co-founder, said that ridesharing means more people can get to where they have to be with significantly less carbon emissions and congestion on the roads. He hopes that a proposed law, called the Countering Distracted Driving and Promoting Green Transportation Act of 2008, will soon remove the legal barriers to its services in Ontario.

“Ontario has been the only place we’ve ran into this problem,” Dewhirst said.

The legal barriers aside, websites make it easier for people who live in the same area and commute along the same routes to meet. The onus of making a carpool or rideshare work, however, still rests with carpoolers themselves.

“It takes more than I thought it would,” Pouw said. “It takes a lot of calling and making sure people will be there.”

Dewhirst agrees that while his site may make it easier, a ride-share’s success ultimately relies on people’s enthusiasm.

“It’s kind of like dating,” he said. “We can match you up with someone, but you have to go through the motions of finding out what they’re like.”

Smart Commute, another Internet-based carpooling site, is a Metrolinx program. It works to eliminate many of the barriers to potential carpoolers. People at Smart Commute work with employers to compensate carpool drivers and set up an Emergency Ride Home program.

Ryan Lanyon, the team leader at Smart Commute, said that the program can provide people with vouchers for a taxi, if they have to work late and miss their carpool home. He said that this makes it easier for people hooked on their cars to make the move to carpooling.

While PickupPal helps people get to a sporting event or a concert, Smart Commute has focused primarily on getting people to work.

Smart Commute’s project manager, George Flint, said that the site is inslowly climbing towards an “optimal” number of 10,000 active users. With about 6,000 current users he said he would like the site to grow.

“It takes time to build a comfort level,” Flint said. “People tell their stories about how they saved time or how they saved money and it starts to get going . . . It’s working.”

Dewhirst said developing the critical mass required was one of the reasons PickupPal chose to focus on ride-shares of all types. But there are other influences.

“Every time the price of gas goes up, our sign-up rate goes up,” he said. “Bad economic news; our sign-up rate goes up.”

In addition, “green minded” carpoolers such as Pouw say carpooling is a “great way to meet new people . . . and other young professionals who are also green minded.”

Far from being a hassle, she sees carpooling as a better way to get around.

“Travelling with company is a lot more exciting than travelling on your own,” she added. “The time goes by much faster.”