Casual Carpooling

April 7, 2008 7:30 AM

Do other ad hoc ridesharing services exist besides "Casual Carpooling" in the Bay Area and "Slugging" in Washington D.C.? What other names do these services go by? What cities?
posted by Jeff Howard to Travel & Transportation (6 answers total)

Chicago has i-Go cars.
posted by sugarfish at 7:38 AM on April 7, 2008

sugarfish, ridesharing is not the same as carsharing.
posted by iknowizbirfmark at 10:14 AM on April 7, 2008

In the US only? Because, if not, this is a huge phenomenon in Europe. Check out the German site mitfahrgelegenheit ("Ride-share Opportunity"), which is very widely used, for example. I wish this sort of thing were more popular in America.
posted by atomly at 10:38 AM on April 7, 2008

In Seattle we have a company called Goose.

http://www.readysetgoose.com/
posted by stilly at 12:10 PM on April 7, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers everyone. I'm mostly focused on the US, but if there are leads outside the country I'm interested in hearing about them too.

Just to clarify, as iknowizbirfmark mentions, I'm looking for ridesharing examples, not carsharing; particularly places where riders and drivers carpool with no advanced coordination and where the participating parties are likely to be strangers.
posted by Jeff Howard at 1:04 PM on April 7, 2008

Jeff, you probably already know about the informal private sort-of-taxi system that exists in Russia and quite a few eastern European countries: because owning a car is expensive, people regularly pick up 'hitchhikers' who pay a small set amount per kilometer. I'm sure there's more about this online--European hitchhiking listservs and message boards talk about it occasionally. I can rustle up more info if you'd like.
posted by soviet sleepover at 10:00 PM on April 22, 2008