Casual Carpooling—Enhanced

Casual carpooling currently functions in environments where, because there is an HOV lane, riders and passengers join together to gain access to that lane. In this article, technology is introduced that will allow casual carpooling to function in areas without HOV lanes by providing an administrative system that records actual carpooling behavior so that incentives other than access to an HOV lane can be made available. This technology also addresses some of the current shortcomings associated with casual carpooling such as personal safety, the “free rider” problem, and the disincentive to maximize the number of passengers sharing a ride. The article concludes with comments on funding enhanced carpool programs including a hypothetical comparison of a program providing monetary incentives for carpooling to the alternative construction of new HOV lanes. Introduction Casual carpooling refers to the sharing of a ride with a driver and one or more passengers, where the ridesharing between the individuals is not established in advance but coordinated on the spot. While there may be a variety of motives for ridesharing, the expression refers primarily to commuting situations where the driver is incentivized to pick up passengers so as to allow for transit using a high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane. This type of carpooling has been around for quite a number of years and is characterized by its informality and lack of governance. Meeting sites tend to evolve where there is reasonable parking (for passengers who may drive to the site and leave their cars) and proximity to major transportation corridors that provide HOV lanes. Casual carpooling has become a recognized Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 10, No. 4, 2007 0 cultural phenomena in places as diverse as Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Houston, and San Francisco. Casual carpooling is often considered a win-win activity. Drivers get access to transit lanes that reduce the length of their commute; passengers get a free commute to work. The community benefits by a reduction in vehicles on the road with its panoply of benefits. Technology for Carpools Radio frequency identification devices (RFID) are now used in a variety of environments involving vehicles. An overview of toll collection systems is described by Saranow ( 005), and the U.S. Border Patrol is now using automatic vehicle identification (AVI) technology to speed border crossings (U.S. Customs 006). While these transponders identify a vehicle, that is all they do. RFID devices are also used to identify people. For example, a major oil company makes available small keychain devices that can be waved by a gas pump to pay for a gasoline purchase; this technology is being extended to other retailers. The proposal herein is to use a transponder that, physically comparable to the dashboard-positioned toll collection transponders, has the additional capability of reading and storing in memory individual RFID devices when they are passed in proximity to the transponder. Then, when interrogated, the transponder transmits its ID along with the individual IDs that were read and stored. There is a one-time registration process where a potential driver registers with the administrator and receives an enhanced transponder. An individual participating in the program as a passenger will register and receive an individual RFID device. The casual carpool begins when a driver enters his vehicle and turns on the transponder. At a collection point, any rider entering the vehicle passes his RFID device by the transponder, which beeps to indicate that the device was read and then records in memory the rider’s ID. As the vehicle has occasion to travel by a reading station, the transponder will transmit its own ID along with IDs identifying the occupants. The reading station will periodically transfer its collected information to the central processing system. This allows for a historical record of carpooling events (who, where, and when) to be created effortlessly. This is the kind of information now manually collected by various carpooling systems to allow for rewardCasual Carpooling—Enhanced ing participants, with the implication that a framework for incentivizing people to form traditional carpools can apply as well to casual carpooling. Identifying the transit corridors to be monitored is critical as it will not in general be possible to have transponder readers on all highways and surface streets that might be used for commuting. With multiple corridors and destinations, the placement of readers would need to be done with care, in particular to avoid situations where commuters are motivated to use a less efficient route simply to ensure that they pass through a transponder reader and get credit for their commute. Establishing a casual carpooling collection point would be subject to the same rationale as at present (density of drivers/riders, parking availability, public transit options), and it would probably be necessary to have a way of distinguishing “registered” passengers (those with RFID devices) from those without,3 as a driver will not get credit for providing a ride to the latter. Two different contexts for casual carpooling exist. The traditional context is where an HOV or toll lane exist, and where a carpool is granted access or reduced-fee privileges on that lane. But casual carpools could exist in any transportation corridor if there was an incentive for drivers and passengers to participate; for ease of reference these will be called non-HOV carpools. Personal Security The caution “not to accept a ride from a stranger” is taught at an early age. While there are characteristics of casual carpooling that tend to ameliorate that concern (random nature of pick-ups; the typical requirement for there to be at least two passengers with a driver; and in some cases the restricted corridor, as for example, crossing of the San Francisco Bay Bridge), it clearly is a concern with a significant number of people in line choosing to decline an offered ride (Burris and Wynn 006) or reporting that the accountability of the third person was a “major factor contributing to their sense of safety” (Gidal 004). That there are websites that exist to report on wayward behavior of drivers and/or passengers is indicative of the concern. While the success of casual carpooling demonstrates that its participants have by and large adjusted to the security issue, the unanswered question is how many people presently do not participate but might choose this commuting model if security could be enhanced? When a driver invites a rider to enter her vehicle with a transponder and the rider has an individual RFID device, both driver and rider can be comforted by knowJournal of Public Transportation, Vol. 10, No. 4, 2007 ing that the other person’s identity is on file and that the ridesharing activity will be recorded as the vehicle passes reading stations. In addition, the administrative system could be designed so as to allow a commuter to provide anonymous feedback. For example, suppose a passenger is picked up by someone who drives dangerously. The system could be set up so that later in the day the passenger could access the Internet, identify himself, and indicate that on that morning’s commute the driver was not recommended because of their driving. Anonymity would be preserved as the passenger would not learn who the driver was. Similarly the driver could record passenger evaluations, again anonymously.4 If the system administrator established behavioral standards, participants with a pattern of inappropriate behavior reports could be warned or excluded from participation. Reporting of Carpool Events Self-reporting of carpooling events when required to obtain incentives is problematic. Underreporting happens due to laziness or forgetfulness, while overreporting can be a deliberate attempt to gain undeserved rewards. With the proposed technology, this reporting would be fully automated, with the only task required being the waving of an RFID device by the transponder when entering the carpool vehicle. How Many Passengers? The codified “rules of conduct” associated with casual carpooling serves to put boundaries on what drivers and passengers do when sharing rides (e.g., limited conversation and no cell phones). One of the constraints on drivers is not to pick up more than the minimum number of passengers needed to qualify for use of an HOV lane (with some exceptions such as late in the commute period when drivers are infrequent). From the viewpoint of the participants, this is a perfectly sound policy: it increases the liquidity of the system by “rewarding” more drivers with passengers. But the flip side is that it encourages low-volume ridesharing and hence more vehicles on the road. In an HOV environment, it would be better to maintain liquidity with a dynamic definition of a qualifying carpool. Suppose there was at the carpool collection point a message board that defined the number of passengers needed to qualify for HOV access as of this point in time. During peak periods this number could be set high (4+) so as to provide an incentive for maximizing vehicle load. This Casual Carpooling—Enhanced 3 would also serve to bring into equilibrium drivers and passengers, as a driver who regularly has difficulty finding a complement of passengers will have a diminishing incentive to leave home alone in hopes of being able to form a carpool. In nonpeak periods the number of passengers required to qualify might be reduced so as both to maintain system liquidity and to provide an incentive for drivers and passengers to shift to nonpeak-hour commuting. In non-HOV carpools, both drivers and passengers can be incentivized to maximize vehicle occupancy, either by increasing the rewards to drivers for more passengers or, more likely, adjusting the program parameters so that rewards are available only for vehicles with a higher minimum number of passenger