Private Car Problem

Using a private car is a transportation system very common in industrialized countries. Between 2004 and 2009, the worldwide production of private vehicles has been of 295 millions of new units and, as of 2004, there were199 millions registered drivers in the U.S.A. Road transport is responsible for about 16% of man-made CO2 emissions.

Private car travelling is a common but wasteful transportation system. Most cars are occupied by just one or two people. Average car occupancy in the U.K. is reported to be 1.59 persons/car, in Germany only 1.05. Private car travelling creates a number of different problems and societal costs worldwide. Environmentally, it is responsible for a wasteful use of a scarce and finite resource, i.e. oil, and causes unnecessary earth pollution. The traffic caused by single occupancy vehicles causes traffic jams and hugely increases the amount of time spent by people in queues on streets. This is a unsavvy use of another scarce resource: time. Moreover, the additional pollution creates health problems to millions of individuals. Lastly, lone drivers in separate cars miss opportunities to meet and talk, incurring in a loss of potential social capital.

One possible solution to all these problems is carpooling, i.e. the act of sharing a trip on a private vehicle between one or more other passengers. The shared use of a single car by two or more people would reduce the number of cars on streets. Carpooling helps the environment by allowing to use oil wisely, to reduce earth pollution and consequent health problems. It reduces traffic and - consequently - time that people spend in their cars. Carpooling has also the potential of increasing social capital by letting people meet and know each other.

Carpooling is not a widespread practice. There are already many systems facilitating the match between drivers and passengers, most of them in form of bulletin board-like web-sites. The intention of offering empty seats of a vehicle is usually announced by a driver many days before the start of the trip. The coordination between a driver and the passengers who are candidating for sharing the trip with him/her is usually carried out by e-mails or private messages in the web-site.

Therefore, we may see carpooling as a static way of sharing a trip.

The availability of geo-aware, mobile devices connected to the Internet opens up pos- sibilities for the formation of carpools in short notice, directly on streets. This phe- nomenon is called dyamic carpooling (also known as dynamic ridesharing, instant rideshar- ing and agile ridesharing).

What is Dynamic Carpooling?

We accept the definition given by DynamicRidesharing.org:

A system that facilitates the ability of drivers and passengers to make one-time ride matches close to their departure time, 
with sufficient convenience and flexibility to be used on a daily basis.

We are going to use DyCaPo as abbreviation for Dynamic CarPooling.

See also the Wikipedia Entry for Dynamic Ridesharing

Dycapo is the name given to a project aiming to share knowledge outcomes and technological products on dynamic carpooling. The information is created using a fully open and collaborative system. This website is the start point and the container of each project component. It is a Wiki, freely accessible and discussable. The Wiki content and the source code are available under permissive and open licenses.

Dycapo Project is composed of four main parts:

 

Mission

Becoming the world standard for Dynamic Carpooling.

 

Our Vision

A simple trip

Paul is in Via Roma, Bolzano, Italy. He wants to move to the cemetery. He takes out his internet-enabled smart-phone with GPS activated, opens his Dycapo client and gives the desired destination, therefore searching for an available trip. Angela is travelling with her car along Corso Libertà, Bolzano. The destination of her previously stored trip is Laives, Italy, southern of the cimitery. She receives a notification from her Dycapo client running on her smartphone, located in a car docking station. The notification contains Paul's position and she accepts his participation request. The client displays the directions for reaching Paul, using the GPS-chip . Paul and Angela meet and share the trip.

 

Objectives

1. Research

2. Action

See Strategy for more information.

Why don't we directly contribute to DynamicRidesharing.org?

We really appreciate Dan Kirshner work, as well as his paper. The only reasons that make us keep our outcomes separated by his Wiki is that the main author of dycapoo.org Dynamic Carpooling website, Daniel, will use them for his BSC thesis and his University requires to know what are his specific contributions. If people finds some of our contents interesting, we encourage to update DynamicRidesharing.org Wiki using our contents. In fact the content on this wiki is released under a Creative Commons licence (see the footer) so reuse of the content, respecting the license is encouraged! This simply means citing who the author of the content you copied is. Thanks!

How to Contribute

In order to contribute, you have to register to the Wiki with a valid e-mail address. Then you will be able to write in Talk sections of pages. We may then allow you to edit pages directly.

Outcomes

People