Car pooling bonds commuters, beats gas prices

NEW YORK — Robert Gilliland didn’t think much about car pooling until gas prices got out of control. Now, he’s happy to trade his motoring freedom for $120 in weekly savings.

Mr. Gilliland found one rider through the classifieds Web site Craigslist and another using the car-pool-matching service eRideShare. Thousands of commuters like him have turned to the Internet to arrange shared rides as average gas prices hover at about $4 a gallon.

Each day, Mr. Gilliland picks up Brian McKenzie near his home in Lakeland, Fla., and Mike Rogers in Seffner on his way to work. He drops off Mr. McKenzie in Tampa and Mr. Rogers in Clearwater, where Mr. Gilliland works as a construction designer. He reverses that for the commute home.

The extra stops add up to an hour in round-trip commuting, meaning he could be spending three hours a day in his Ford Taurus, but the alternative is to shell out $150 a week from his own pocket. With car pooling, his two passengers contribute $60 a piece; he pays only half of that to factor in wear and tear on his car.

“We’ve become friends,” Mr. Gilliland said. “It’s been a good experience for me socially as well as economically.”

Gas prices have climbed even higher in the since Mr. Gilliland started car pooling. The number of daily visitors to eRideShare has jumped about threefold since February, when gas started to climb from the $3-a-gallon range. A rival site, Carpoolworld.com, had about 4,400 new U.S. registrations in both June and July, compared with some 800 in February.

Although some people turned to these sites long ago to help reduce pollution or take advantage of faster, high-occupancy vehicle lanes that require at least two occupants, the pocketbook has been the largest influencer of all.

“People are well aware of global warming, … but it takes the price of gasoline to get them to take that step,” said Steven Schoeffler, founder of eRideShare in Edwardsville, Ill. “It’s something they wanted to do anyway but maybe needed a little extra impetus.”

The various car-pooling sites vary in how they connect commuters.

Craigslist offers straightforward classified listings, alongside the ads for new roommates and used furniture, for instance, while Zimride’s Carpool works as a Facebook application, tapping the personal profiles users keep at the popular online hangout. Zimride also lets users rate others akin to eBay Inc.’s feedback system.

Even governments are jumping in. A program run by the Seattle-area King County Metro Transit has been online since 2001, while the Vermont Agency of Transportation wants to start automating by this fall a commuter-matching service it now runs manually by phone.

These services are generally free for drivers and passengers, who can work out whether they take turns driving or designate a single driver and chip in for fuel.

GoLoco, created by the co-founder of the Zipcar auto-sharing service, takes a 10 percent cut when participants use an optional online-payment service to avoid having to exchange cash in the car. Other sites make money on ads and commuter-related services, such as consulting.

Car pooling isn’t for everyone, though.

Hoping to save about $30 a week, Michelle Sandoval has looked on Carpoolworld for rides near Los Angeles. But her hours in film production fluctuate so much that any arrangement would leave her “at the mercy of someone else’s transportation schedule,” she said.

Story Continues →