Casual Carpooling Scan Report

Transport Policy, 2016

Casual carpooling is an informal form of commuter ridesharing operating in Washington, D.C.; Houston, Texas; and San Francisco, California. In contrast to new forms of shared-use mobility, casual carpooling has been in existence for over 30 years and uses no information communication technology, and is entirely run informally by its users. Researchers have been fascinated by this phenomenon and have conducted studies in the past, but there remains a lack of up-to-date quantitative data. This study examines the motivations and behaviors of casual carpoolers in the San Francisco Bay Area to understand user characteristics and motivations. In Winter 2014, the authors observed and counted participants and vehicles at four casual carpooling locations, interviewed participants riding in carpooling vehicles (N=16), and conducted intercept surveys (N=503) at ten East Bay pickup locations. The results indicate that the motivations for casual carpooling participation include convenience, time savings, and monetary savings, while environmental and community-based motivations ranked low. Casual carpooling is an efficient transportation option for these commuters, while environmental sustainability benefits are a positive byproduct. Seventy-five percent of casual carpool users were previously public transit riders, and over 10% formerly drove alone. Logit modeling found that casual carpool role (i.e., always a rider or sometimes a driver), age, and employment status were key drivers in modal choice. Further research on a larger scale is needed to identify the elements needed for system replication in different areas.

Transportation Research Part A: General, 1987

Carpooling is the commuting mode of 18 to 20% of American workers, but relatively little definitive information has been available on who carpools, how and why. Based on data from the 1977-78 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey, this paper analyzes the characteristics of carpoolers, distinguishes among different types of carpoolers, identifies the key differences between carpoolers and drive alone and transit commuters, describes how commuters carpool, and offers explanations of why commuters carnool. The Daoer also addresses the issue of the feasibility of a substantial increase in carpool mode iare.

Journal of Public Transportation, 2006

In the last 30 years, determined travelers have developed a new method of travel that offers the benefits of traveling on an HOV lane without forming traditional carpools. Casual carpools, also known as "slugging, " are impromptu carpools formed among strangers to meet the occupancy requirements of HOV lanes. In this research, survey respondent data from Houston, Texas, were used to examine casual carpool passengers. Results of the analyses revealed that being on a commute trip, making more trips per week, being between the ages of 25 and 34, and having professional/managerial or administrative/clerical occupations all increased the likelihood of a traveler choosing to casual carpool. Additionally, having a household income between $25,000 and $35,000 significantly reduced the likelihood of casual carpooling. Understanding the types of travelers who casual carpooled and the information gleaned in these analyses can be used to better evaluate HOV and HOT lane use and performance. Casual carpool passengers can comprise a significant portion of HOV/HOT lane person movement and should be considered when investigating HOV or HOT lane implementation.

Transportation Research Record, 1995

Carpooling may be defined as shared ride trips via private automobiles for the journey to and from work. In the past, researchers argued that carpoolers could not be distinguished from other commuters based on demographic characteristics. Recently, some researchers have cited the influx of women in the work force and the continuing suburbanization of jobs and housing as reasons for the sharp decline in carpooling between 1980 and 1990. A review of significant research on carpooling over the past 20 years is presented with an in-depth analysis of 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Study data to identify the demographics of carpooling, then and now. Prior research suggests that family income, gender, distance to work, and residential location have the greatest effect on carpool formation. This study suggests that automobile availability within households and the level of education of individual commuters may be more significant factors in carpool formation. The research shows tha...

2018 International Conference of Electrical and Electronic Technologies for Automotive, 2018

The paper approaches the actual situation of carpooling, by reporting the most updated data divided by its different orms: private, corporate and urban carpooling. For this last kind some innovative experience are reported: instant carpooling, carpooling integrated with car sharing and with other transport modes. The potential of carpooling in the future scenario of disruptive technologies, such as the autonomous driving cars and the dynamic road charging is analyzed. Finally a proposal for some recommendations related to the user-centered approach and on the role of the different stakeholders.

Transportation Research Record, 2007

Managed lanes are facilities in which usage eligibility is controlled by pricing policies and other considerations. Operation of managed lanes involves, among other things, setting desired objectives for the facility and determining user eligibility and pricing policies. Most managed-lane facilities in the United States are high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, in which single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) are charged a toll for using the facility, but HOVs travel on the facility for free. Current research has found inefficiencies in HOT lanes and called for eliminating HOV preferential treatment, either by opening up HOV lanes to all traffic or by imposing a toll on all lanes . However, supporters of HOT lanes argue that the policy promises a number of benefits, including promoting non-SOV modes, especially carpools and transit; generating needed transportation revenues; easing political opposition; and improving air quality .

Computers & Operations Research, 2022

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Sustainability, 2021

This article proposes several new research directions regarding the future and sustainability of carpooling practices. The reflection is based on a systematic review of the literature (2010–2021) and a consideration of some of the main recent changes in carpooling, such as carpooling platforms and apps, and changes in lifestyles that may affect carpooling practices, such as telework. Carpooling is defined here as the sharing of short- or long-distance car rides between people who are not members of the same household, for a trip (or part of a trip) already scheduled by the driver, free of charge or expense sharing. After a description of the corpus selection method used, followed by a brief review of existing literature, we propose three new avenues for research. The first avenue is a call for greater consideration of forms of transport, other than carpooling, to work (or to the place of study), which remain poorly studied. The second avenue proposes the investigation of the role th...

arXiv (Cornell University), 2021

Carpooling has the potential to transform itself into a mass transportation mode by abandoning its adherence to deterministic passenger-driver matching for door-to-door journeys, and by adopting instead stochastic matching on a network of fixed meeting points. Stochastic matching is where a passenger sends out a carpooling request at a meeting point, and then waits for the arrival of a self-selected driver who is already travelling to the requested meeting point. Crucially there is no centrally dispatched driver. Moreover, the carpooling is assured only between the meeting points, so the onus is on the passengers to travel to/from them by their own means. Thus the success of a stochastic carpooling service relies on the convergence, with minimal perturbation to their existing travel patterns, to the meeting points which are highly frequented by both passengers and drivers. Due to the innovative nature of stochastic carpooling, existing off-the-shelf workflows are largely insufficient for this purpose. To fill the gap in the market, we introduce a novel workflow, comprising of a combination of data science and GIS (Geographic Information Systems), to analyse driver GPS traces. We implement it for an operational stochastic carpooling service in southeastern France, and we demonstrate that relaxing door-to-door matching reduces passenger waiting times. Our workflow provides additional key operational indicators, namely the driver flow maps, the driver flow temporal profiles and the driver participation rates.

2020

Carpooling has the potential to be a key component of the transport mix in post-carbon, ecologically sustainable societies. To achieve this potential, it is imperative that the carpooling is transformed from an individualistic, private mode of transport to a hybrid private-public mode. Door-to-door matches are highly convenient for individual, sporadic carpool journeys , but hinder the development of carpooling as a mass transit service. The focus shifts to matching trajectory segments which are highly frequented by both passengers and drivers. Whilst this leads to a loss of personal convenience, as drivers and passengers are constrained to converge at meeting points along the trajectory segments, these meeting points act as aggregators to reach a critical mass of matched passenger demand and driver supply. In a world first, Ecov provides innovative carpooling services where passengers make carpooling requests without a priori matched drivers, and that these requests are stochastica...