As part of our research, the Real-Time Rides Workshop was hosted at MIT in April 2009. Participants included rideshare service providers, technology providers, the public sector and the academic community. The primary objective of the workshop was to facilitate discussion among the various rideshare stakeholders with the goal of developing strategies that both address barriers to rideshare participation, and promote the widespread implementation of ridesharing. Please visit the Real-Time Rides Workshop page for further details.
For those from the MIT community looking for rideshare / carpool opportunities, we encourage you to visit the MIT Facilities Commuting Options page.
We would like to thank Mike and Jenny Messner and their family foundation, The Speedwell Foundation, for their generous sponsorship of our research.
News / Updates
Last modified on 2010-09-13 16:07:46 GMT.
September 13, 2010
After this year’s rideshare workshop at the 2010 TRB Annual Meeting (“Reinventing Carpooling to Meet Transportation’s Greatest Challenges”), a follow-up workshop has been scheduled for the 2011 TRB Annual Meeting this coming January. For information on last year’s workshop, and to help create the agenda for this year’s workshop, please visit the “Emerging Ridesharing Solutions workshop” website.
August 31, 2010
The website has been substantially updated including a number of new documents in the Resources section, please take a look around.
The APA has posted the broadcast and presentation materials for the webinar titled “Dynamic Ridesharing”: Carpooling Meets the Information Age.
August 3, 2010
Quite a number of updates to pass along:
1. The Research Team has been busy writing and is happy to share the first master’s thesis (“Real-Time” Ridesharing: Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges of Designing a Technology-based Rideshare Trial for the MIT Community) to be written based on this research, and two working papers submitted to the 2011 Transportation Research Board; ‘“Real-Time” Ridesharing – The Opportunities and Challenges of Utilizing Mobile Phone Technology to Improve Rideshare Services‘ & ‘A Proposed Methodology for Estimating Rideshare Viability within an Organization, applied to the MIT Community‘
2. Research Team member Andrew Amey will be joining Marc Oliphant to host an American Planning Association webinar titled “Dynamic Ridesharing”: Carpooling Meets the Information Age on Thursday, August 5th at 1pm Eastern. Participation is free, please plan on attending.
3. Congratulations to Avego Shared Transport for being selected as the provider for a new flexible carpool pilot program in Seattle!
4. Congratulations to Santa Barbara County & Santa Barbara Community Environmental Council for being awarded funding through FHWA’s Value Pricing Pilot Program for the development of a dynamic ridesharing service!
March 17, 2010
Two exciting pieces of news to share today:
1. The Winter 2010 Edition of TDM Review contains a series of articles on ridesharing, many contributed by the MIT “Real-Time” Rideshare Research Team.
2. A working paper written by Research Team member Andrew Amey was awarded Second Place in the American Planning Association, Transportation Planning Division, 2010 Student Paper Competition.
December 15, 2009
Just a quick reminder about an upcoming discussion on ridesharing. A session titled “Reinventing Carpooling to Meet Transportation’s Greatest Challenges” will take place at the 2010 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC on Sunday, January 10th. The session will take place from 1:30 – 4:30pm at the Marriott hotel. If you are planning on attending the TRB Annual Meeting, or are going to be in DC around that time, please plan on attending the session.
September 26, 2009
Congratulations to iCarpool for winning the ITS America Congestion Challenge and collecting the $50,000 USD award!
July 30, 2009
The much anticipated “Moving Cooler” report from Cambridge Systematics was released two days ago and had some interesting results on ridesharing’s potential to reduce GHG emissions and energy consumption. Their modeling suggested that ridesharing was an attractive non-pricing strategy to reduce GHG emissions and could account for 0.5 – 2.0% fuel savings nationwide, depending on the level of deployment.
July 1, 2009
One of the Real-Time Rides Workshop participants, Paul Minett, has submitted a TCRP Proposal for consideration and potential funding. The proposal is titled, “How Can Carpooling/Vanpooling Complement Transit Services, to Reduce SOV Travel?” and can be found here.
June 30, 2009
Several of Updates:
1. ITS America Congestion Challenge – The goal of the challenge is to identify the “best ideas to solve congestion, improve mobility, the environment and public safety.” Proposals can be in any stage of development (concept through revenue generating service). Registration is open until August 1, 2009 I believe. In August, the top 9 entries will be selected and the winner will be announced in September. The winning prize is $50,000 USD.
2. Atlantic Monthly Piece on Dynamic Ridesharing – Atlantic Monthly’s June 2009 edition had a small piece on dynamic ridesharing titled, “How to End Traffic in Los Angeles”.
May 10, 2009
The Workshop Summary has now been posted to the website. It can be found along with all of the other workshop information on the Real-Time Rides page.
April 14, 2009
A comprehensive version of the agenda with locations has been posted. We’ve also provided more detail on how to find Building 1 on the first day of the workshop. All of this information can be found on the Real-Time Rides Workshop page.