MyCarpools Releases Free Internet Carpooling Service
Wednesday, 28 May 2008.
In response to the escalating costs of fuel MyCarpools.com has opened its carpooling internet gateway free to the general public. MyCarpools is a carpool matching service to help people who may consider sharing a ride find someone going their way.
MyCarpools was originally developed for corporations to provide as a staff benefit for their employees. However recent high petrol prices have prompted the MyCarpools developers to release a version to the internet for free, to help people avoid some of the costs of commuting.
Someone willing to share a ride simply has to register their daily travel on the system, and hit the search button to identify other users who are going their way about the same time of day.
One of the great advantages of MyCarpools is that all of this can be done without actually releasing any personal contact details at all, until a user chooses to.
The MyCarpools webservice has a fully integrated online messaging service so that potential carpool partners can communicate without even providing each other an email address.
"MyCarpools will match people into carpools in any city or town in Australia once there are sufficient numbers of people registered in that area to start finding compatible trips," said Michael McCann from MyCarpools.
"So for a while you might not find too many possibilities for sharing a ride to and from work, but as more people register, matches will start to show up," McCann said.
"What we know from experience is that people are very comfortable sharing rides with people who work in the same organization, or who are going to the same place, be it the same building or very close nearby. The amazing thing is how many people find others leaving from very close to where they live, and going to places very close to where they go. But until they try something like this they will only ever see each other as someone else, in an otherwise empty car, at the traffic lights or on the highway."
"In the corporate version of the system there are extensive administrator functions that allow an in-house manager to communicate with staff, access all the data you need to manage incentives and carparks and generate all manner of reports that record the emissions avoided, calculate fuel saved and thus generate an NPV for the system," he said. "When people see how much money they can save for their staff, and how many carparks they can free up, they start to take notice. There really are gains all around and we do not even try to calculate the value of road tolls avoided, wear and tear on the cars, and parking fees. At this point we just calculate fuel savings and emissions avoided."
The system has been in use by a Top 100 company since late 2006 and the experience with that client resulted in a redesign to allow for easier management of internal communications and reporting. For corporate users MyCarpools reports fuel savings and emissions avoided to very high degrees of accuracy, however the public system simply incorporates the matching and messaging services.
"Petrol prices are going to mean a lot of people are looking for ways to avoid driving. In many cases of course that will just mean catching a bus or train but for a lot of people public transport is not an option, or the public transport system is already overloaded. In these cases we think that helping fill some of those empty seats with willing passengers, and putting more people into fewer cars is going to be a great help."
"Carpooling is not for everyone. It does require some flexibility, some openness and willingness to get a carpool going. And if a ride does not work out, don’t worry, a carpool is not a life sentence, you can still go back to your original means of travel for a day, or until you find another match."
"In the end carpooling is an activity between consenting adults, all we can do is help them find each other."
For further information contact enquiries@mycarpools.com