Check out the chart comparing US population to number of vehicles and number of drivers. Certainly, less cars on the road means more economical, efficient, safe transportation.
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| Vehicle and Population Ratios (from wikipedia) |
Zimride is a revolutionary carshare service that creates carpool groups within companies and institutions. It is also a very cool start-up located in Silicon Valley and rumored to actually be profitable.
Here is what Zimride does: Zimride is a customizable website where drivers can list openings in their cars for any length trip (to work, to a concert, to a vacation, across the county, back to school, etc..). Riders can also create a listing of rides that they need. Hopefully (and usually), the driver and rider can connect. Another option is the interface that Zimride has with Zipcar (Carshare), where a couple riders who cannot find a driver can rent a car together splitting the hourly rate.
Why is this awesome? Let's say you are the University of Maryland or Wal-mart. Instead of building ANOTHER student or employee parking lot, additional roads, and running more shuttles, you get a customizable website that your people will actually use that will reduce transportation costs for your students/employees, reduce your institutional transportation costs, and contribute to a societal good (there must be some financial/marketing/tax incentive for that somewhere).
It is also awesome because the idea of carpooling is as old as transportation itself, and it exists in some form everywhere in the world. In fact, in some developing nations the only form of transportation is hitching a ride with someone else (carpool). Good for Zimride for making Carpool car-cool!
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| A peak at the Zimride website at http://www.zimride.com/ |
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