Carpool

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(Redirected from Carpooling)

Carpooling (also known as ride-sharing or, in the UK, lift-sharing and even, confusingly, as car sharing, is shared use of a car, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. There are sometimes special facilities for carpoolers, including designated pick-up points and high-occupancy vehicle lanes which are also at time opened up to designated cars with multiple riders. Carpool projects have been around in fairly structured form going back to the mid-seventies, and in recent years have begun to make much more extensive use of the internet and software support systems. With the recent advent of mobile phones and SMS, there is a push to integrate these technologies into more flexible systems.

1 Advantages
2 Disadvantages
3 See also
4 External links

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Advantages

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As most cars are designed for a maximum of 4–5 persons but only are occupied by 1 person, car pooling has potential to improve the capacity of congested traffic corridors in cities, with minimal investment in infrastructure.

Higher occupancy rates also can reduce consumption of oil thereby reducing corresponding political and economic risks, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce common pollution, and save considerable expenses from gasoline, oil, tires, auto depreciation, tolls, parking, and in some cases insurance.

Carpools may provide social connections in an increasingly disconnected society.
Some larger car pools offer “sweeper services” of late pick-up options for people having to stay longer at work. One form of backup is an arrangement with a local taxi company.

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Disadvantages

Planning and then operating a car pool system is a challenge of considerable technical and management complexity, and in the past the degree of these challenges has often been considerably underestimated.

Drivers carry the additional burden of potential legal action from passengers in case of an accident.

Carpooling combines many of the disadvantages of public transportation (lack of privacy, not on-demand) with the disadvantages of the automobile (low safety, high fuel consumption, high cost of labour).

It is sometimes claimed that well designed public transport systems have proven a faster and cheaper alternative to carpooling in big cities. This is not necessarily true (complex criteria for comparison), since the main reason that car pools have failed in the past is simply that they have been inadequately designed and managed.

Most car pools have to face considerable instabilities as people often change travel patterns, and where these have been overcome this has been the result of more sophisticated management and improved communications and computer support systems.

Contrast with: single occupant vehicle

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