Hitching a ride easier in Portland, Ore.
Portland, Ore., is developing a site to organize local carpools and vanpools
Portland, Ore., is developing a Web site that will be one of the first in
the nation to offer a fully automated system for organizing local carpools
and vanpools. The intent is to save 160 million vehicle miles — equivalent
to 70,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — during the planned 10-year
period of the program.
Tentatively called CarpoolMatchNW.org, the site will be beta tested
during the summer with the participation of about 20 government agencies
and nonprofit organizations, before an expected formal launch as a free
site Sept. 1.
"Our mission is to get people to do anything other than drive," said
Cynthia Thompson, manager of Portland's new Transportation Options Division.
"But, typically, when people have wanted to carpool or vanpool, they've
only done it for longer trips and have had to sign in to several different
databases to organize them."
Thompson hopes the Web site will attract more people to carpooling by
making trips easier to arrange, she said, as well as making shorter shared
trips possible.
People will be tracked when they sign on for the service, as well as
through regular surveys. There will also be built-in calculators on the
Web site, so people can see both the daily and cumulative emissions- and
fuel-savings from the program.
Thompson said there is already much interest in expanding this statewide,
as well as in making it available for people who might want to plan alternative
trips by bike and other forms of transportation.
RTSe USA Inc., Redmond, Wash., developed the software for the site.
The initial $120,000 for building the site was provided by a grant from
the Climate Trust, a Portland-based nonprofit organization that funds projects
that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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