To find a match, users enter home address, place of business and work schedule. Prospective carpoolers and vanpoolers also provide information relevant to ride-sharing, such as whether they prefer to ride or drive and whether they smoke.
Within seconds, RideShare spits out the names, phone numbers and e- mail addresses of prospective matches: riders or drivers with similar work schedules and commutes. The site has a form-letter e-mail message that can be sent to matches, and it contains lots of additional information about successful ways to carpool, vanpool and use park- and-ride lots, including tips for sharing costs and carpool etiquette. Launched in February, the site had more than 12,000 visitors in its first two months and completed more than 4,000 matches.
In some form, carpool matching has existed in King County since 1973. The idea for taking the service online dates back to 1997, when Microsoft Corp. set up an in-house carpool-mapping system for its employees. The Redmond Transportation Management Association, a nonprofit, then used a grant to develop a similar service for its members in 1999. Once Redmond had come up with a working system, King County Metro Transit contracted with Logical e-Business Solutions Inc. (then known as Puget Sound Systems Group) to expand it throughout the Seattle region; it now covers nine counties. The cost for King County, $150,000, included fully integrating Internet carpool matching with an existing phone-matching service.
