Casual Car Pool: Easing the Commute in the Bay Area
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 03.28.07
TreeHugger is a big fan of carpooling, having featured such organizations as eRideShare, NuRide and Ridester on these pages before. These are all handy, effective services, though they require things like registration to their respective sites and specific instructions as to how the car pool or rideshare will go down (who picks up who, where you're going, etc.). Casual Car Pool take a different approach, offering Bay Area commuters a ride across the Bay Bridge, while avoiding the toll, and riding in the (theoretically faster) carpool lane, pre-registration or sign up not required. Just show up at one of the designated 20+ locations in Oakland, Berkeley and other Bay Area locales (many are near public transportation, so you don't have to drive to them), and catch a ride; cars with three or more people get to skip the toll and cruise in the carpool lane. No more fighting bridge traffic or fighting for a seat on BART, and the fewer cars on the road cuts back on congestion, emissions and parking difficulty in the city. The organization has been going for 30 years, so they're obviously doing something right, and we suspect there are many similar organizations in cities around the US and the world. Anyone else have a Casual Car Pool in your town? Leave details in the comments section below. ::Casual Car Pool via ::Eco-Chick
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What these people don't realise is that if they could setup their trips on NuRide, they would get $$$ for doing what they are doing right now.
Too bad NuRide is not yet on the west coast. Someone help them get there!
While the 30yead old tradition is very good and useful, these people could get their money's worth if NuRide was on the west coast; they could get some really nice rewards for doing what they do now.
Too bad there are no supporters for NuRide in the corporate and the political sector on the west coast to get them there.
Ankush... you don't happen to work for NuRide do you? ;-)
Looks like a cool program!
Tihs program is totally incredible. I've used it to get into the city after staying in the east bay for the night and it's just great - it's the kind of thing that restores one's faith that people are basically nice folks.
It's really as simple as you see described. You simply show up and there are cars just sitting there waiting for you. You just hop in and say good morning!
I'm told they have something similar outside DC, but they call it "slugging"
There's a great website called GishiGo that does a lot the "free and anonymous" social networks avoid. It helps people exchange identity using PayPal. And it creates a papertrail and bunch of other good stuff. I use it all the time. And I use the social networks like Craigslist and Kijiji and MySpace. The more people who see my GishiGo rideshare post the more likely I will have successful carpool. And it helps me build confidence. That's the real issue. Applaud the guys who are using Facebook account to help with the confidence issue. GishiGo.com seems really good to me. There are a bunch of other websites, but this GishiGo is very powerful network design and only one that is so convenient to me. No registration. Open to anyone who isn't fearful of exchanging their identity (basically filtering out the "need anonymous" people, which is what I want in ridesharing).
http://www.GishiGo.com
There's a great website called GishiGo that does a lot the "free and anonymous" social networks avoid. It helps people exchange identity using PayPal. And it creates a papertrail and bunch of other good stuff. I use it all the time. And I use the social networks like Craigslist and Kijiji and MySpace. The more people who see my GishiGo rideshare post the more likely I will have successful carpool. And it helps me build confidence. That's the real issue. Applaud the guys who are using Facebook account to help with the confidence issue. GishiGo.com seems really good to me. There are a bunch of other websites, but this GishiGo is very powerful network design and only one that is so convenient to me. No registration. Open to anyone who isn't fearful of exchanging their identity (basically filtering out the "need anonymous" people, which is what I want in ridesharing).
http://www.GishiGo.com
Vancouver B.C. area now has a casual carpooling organization that is supported by all three North Shore municipalities. We are Ride Club.
Our goal is to get more than one person in every car going across our bridges into Vancouver.
Check out our site: www.rideclub.ca
Got to add RideSearch.com to that list. They are a free nationwide carpool matching service and were recently featured in the Good Morning America Carpool Challenge.