The substantial difference in modeled rideshare potential and the observed level of ridesharing suggests that human preferences, or attitudes, appear to be a much larger barrier to increased rideshare participation than incompatible trip characteristics.

The high level of rideshare potential within the MIT community suggests that policy makers may want to target large organizations for increased rideshare participation. Large organizations have some key characteristics that make them amenable to rideshare promotion including a large ‘social network’ of employees that are likely to know one and other (thereby reducing safety concerns), a common destination (making the matching process simpler & increasing match rates), the ability to offer benefits deemed valuable to employees (such as reduced parking costs and flextime), and the legitimacy to gather large amounts of personal travel information from employees.

Large organizations that have detailed travel information also have the ability to engage employees in customized travel planning. Providing highly tailored travel information, such as the variety of travel modes available to a specific employee, and/or the number of fellow employees that they could potentially rideshare with, allows firms to provide an unconventional benefit while simultaneously encouraging changes in travel behavior.

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