I recently received my newest copy of The Next American City — a magazine similar to Spacing, but focused on all of the US of A. One article that caught my eye was a piece about casual carpooling (called “Collective Hitch-hiking” by Mollie Lee) in the San Francisco East Bay Area.
Here’s how it works: people meet at designated spots for pick-up, mostly bus or subway stations. The rides are a first-come, first-serve basis with no reservations to be made. You line up and get in the next available car (though you have the right to wait for a vehicle or person you are comfortable with, a good policy especially for women driving with strangers). Most pick-up areas have a “connecting” or designated drop-off spot in downtown San Francisco.
The financial benefits are good too: carpooling exempts car owners from the $4 Bay Bridge toll (about $1,000 a year in savings). The “hitch-hiker” saves money from not taking a trip on the BART system (costs about $3 to $4 depending on your final destination).
Carpoolers can check out a web site called RideNow.org to see if any bad drivers/trips have been reported. An etiquette guide is also available (don’t wear stinky perfume, driver determines chattiness of the drive, don’t adjust the radio without permission, etc).
I have yet to hear of anything similar in Toronto or the GTA. In a relatively friendly city like Toronto, where crime is low compared to similar sized American cities, a program like this should be able to flourish. Or maybe we just need tolls on the highways leading into the city to make something like this possible.
photo by Miles Storey
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Sometimes it’s HOV lanes that encourage these sorts of things. One of the major links in Seattle, the 520 bridge, is notorious for its traffic jams and its HOV lane is restricted to 3-person carpools. For years, drivers have looked for people at bus stops to get them up to the HOV threshold. It’s interesting that it’s the passenger, not the car, that’s the valuable commodity.
When traffic is particularly bad, the HOV lane on 520 can make 30-45 minutes difference, so there’s plenty of time to make a bit of a detour to drop off the extra person at a convenient place for them.
In Washington DC they call it slugging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging
When i lived in SF, the hitchhikers were called “slugs”. It could save a bundle of time during rush hour.
A friend of mine in Vancouver hitchhikes to work every day. He started when there was a transit strike a while back, but then he just continued after the strike was over. He says it’s faster than transit for his particular route. He’s never had a problem getting a ride (he is respectable-looking) and has learned various techniques for making it easier to get rides. I believe he uses a nice sign. And it makes for something new each day.
Back in the ’80s and early ’90s there was a ride share system that took people between cities. One was called Allo Stop. But that’s between cities. I believe the inter-city motor coach operators brought that to an end. Or it could have been the insurance companies being concerned about reprecussions from serious accidents when a vehicle has paying passengers.
There are ride boards in smaller centres like the ride board at Queen’s University but that’s usually for weekend or holiday travel. There may have been some ride sharing come out of that. Not being a motorist, I wouldn’t know.
I think craigslist is big for finding inter-city rides these days. Though with the usual anecdotal not-exactly-horror but-sort-of-crummy stories that go along with this sort of thing.
The Bay Area casual carpool phenomenon started oddly enough with a transit strike. I carpooled for 6 years to commute from Oakland to SF for work. It was awesome, relatively safe, and convenient with several pick up points, at least into the City as they call it, much to the dismay of all the other cities closeby. Not so great for the reverse commute since people leave at different times in the PM peak. Moving back to Canada, I was was dissappointed to see so few HOV lanes in areas where transit is not an option.
I came across this site called pickuppal.com just last week that is doing just this thing here in Toronto. It seems like the whole thing is based around casual carpooling. What I thought was neat was that it was like Facebook and people upload their picture and so you can see who it is that wants to give you a ride.
has anyone ever heard of rental car jockey ? Where you get cheap rentals for cars that need to go back to originating city ?
The North Shore of Vancouver ( West Vancouver, and North Vancouver ) now have organized casual carpooling.
We are called Ride Club, and hundreds have joined. Check out our site. http://www.rideclub.ca
We are big with students, because the local bus company Translink, has been unable to supply enough busses, probably because they are building an elevated train from the airport to downtown.