Flexible Carpooling Workshop January 26

We received an invitation from Paul Minett, Managing Director of Trip Convergence Ltd, to attend a flexible carpooling workshop. The invite is open to all, so let us know if you are going.

Flexible Carpooling Workshop

This is to invite you to the following no cost event:

What: A workshop to explore ‘flexible car pooling’ for the Portland Region (read more below)

Where: Metro Council Chambers, Metro Center, 600 N. E. Grand, Portland

When: 3 pm to 5:30 pm, 26 January 2009 (Refreshments on arrival and at the end of the session compliments of Trip Convergence Ltd).

Who: All Portland and Region (including Vancouver, WA, and Salem) transportation agencies, and other interested parties. RSVP to Paul Minett.

Why:
In November the Oregon Transportation Commission heard a presentation from Paul Minett of Trip Convergence. Paul is seeking a regional location to carry out beta trials of ‘flexible carpooling’. Paul has a hypothesis that what is needed for (much) greater levels of car pooling is ‘meeting places’, rather than ‘databases’. Swimming against the flow of conventional wisdom, Paul thinks that people would share rides without pre-arrangement, in high volumes, if we could make it easy for them to do so, and that this could reduce the levels of congestion in urban areas. He says that enabling greater ride sharing is an ‘assembly problem’, not an ‘information problem’.

If Paul is right, then flexible carpooling could be a good way to reduce the levels of traffic over the CRC, and to reduce demand for parking in Salem. It could help on busy routes all around the region. The evidence that Paul could be right is found in the ‘slug lines’ in Washington DC, and the ‘casual carpooling’ in San Francisco. Between these two locations as many as 6,000 three person, single use carpools are formed every day at almost no cost. Paul believes that a more formal version of these casual systems could make car pooling much more common. The main difference between this and other carpooling approaches is the removal of the need for pre-arrangement by enabling meeting places. He notes that no-one has initiated such a system, the casual ones mentioned above grew up of their own accord, so research is needed to determine what it would take to get one started.

Paul is returning to Oregon in late January to follow up on the meetings that he had in November. He has offered his time to do a workshop with transportation agencies from around the region, to see if the initial interest that was expressed can be converted into a project. He is hoping to work collaboratively with all relevant agencies, as it is his belief that through collaboration we will achieve the best result. Metro has agreed to provide the venue for the workshop.

The workshop would be a great opportunity to network with your regional colleagues while hearing more about this new opportunity. The proposed agenda is set out below. Note that attendance doesn’t represent a commitment to doing flexible carpooling, but that by the end of the workshop Paul is hoping to find out if the regional organisations are interested in moving forward with the idea.

The proposed agenda:

Part 1: If we wanted to do it…

1. What is flexible carpooling
2. Why would we want to have flexible carpooling
3. How might it work

Part 2: Where would we do it?

1. What defines a good route (agree criteria)
2. Suggestions of routes based on local knowledge
3. Apply criteria and rank suggestions

Part 3: How would we do it?

1. Governance
2. Operating Model
3. Revenue Model

Part 4: What would be the barriers?

1. Critical Issues
2. Deal breakers
3. Implementation Sequence

Part 5: What would be the next steps?

1. Is there a will to proceed?
2. Who will do what?