| I live on on the south shore Long Island in the suburbs of NYC. My community is a fairly dense, walkable community, but most jobs are located in office parks in the burbs or a commuter rail ride away in the city (or possibly Brooklyn/Queens). After seeing the same cars every morning drive the same stretches of highway for a while, I thought I'd have a brilliant idea. Create a website where people can post their commutes to possibly look for people to share with. The site would have been free to use (it would be a portfolio piece but I wouldn't turn down a donation here or there) and wouldn't encourage or prohibit any financial exchange between users. Turns out NYS already has a site for that: http://www.511ny.org/rideshare/ So I guess if the site exists and no one is using it (and I didn't know about it until I started thinking about attempting to make my own) the issue is publicity. So I posted flyers around town, at the commuter rail station, at the farmers' market. I'm not sure if there was an uptick in rideshares, but you're right, Michael (of Portland?). Here's something that's been done for a while, for free, with the state even trying to encourage it. Most cars are still empty. If Lyft can, but offering a financial incentive, get this to take off, maybe it is an improvement. I think it's possible that: free ride sharing > monetized ride sharing > no ride sharing Maybe there's some pitfalls I haven't thought of though ... |