Patent ID: 7840427

Claim:
A method of sharing transportation employing a ground transportation network comprising the steps of providing a computer network; establishing an electronic registry in said computer network of capacity containing an indication of the spare transport capacity and location of a plurality of transport vehicles; establishing a network of nodes in said computer network representing a plurality of pick-up points and a plurality of drop-off points; abstracting a geographic representation of a predetermined transport vehicle journey by calculating places where said predetermined transport vehicle journey intersects said nodes and representing said predetermined transport vehicle journey in the format of a set of said nodes; providing an electronic registry in said computer network of demand containing an indication of the demand for transportation needs of a plurality of transport users; effecting a match in a match engine in said computer network of said transport capacity of at least one transport vehicle in said electronic registry of capacity with said transport demand for a journey of at least one transport user in said electronic registry of demand for transport between at least two of said nodes.