Green Transport More Expensive?

There has been a small flurry of blog posts on green travel sites recently about the costs of green travel. It seems that in general you do not pay more to exercise an eco transport decision.

We'd like to point out that Rideshare as a transport option can actually be CHEAPER for both parties engaging - the driver can offset part of their fuel cost and the rider often gets a quality ride at less than a budget bus ticket.

Robots - in our near future?

Science fiction has been promising for sometime that Robots will move into our cultures and provide service and manufacturing services that we can only dream about.

We have been thinking about the impact of technology on transport. This Youtube video is not transport orientated but it has a breath-taking impact on those thinking a robot future is a long way away.

Personal Rapid Transport (PRT)

After my post last week about the tube freight system I have been keeping an eye on similar self-guided vehicles in the news.

Heathrow airport has had a system in development for some years to move people around between terminals. hotels and carparks. The difference between a PRT and normal mass transit is that people have their own vehicle. And the difference between than and a normal car is that the vehicle operates on a network that offers more services than, for instance, a road. These services include automated driving, propulsion and in a 'sci fi' look into the future multiple configurations of vehicle - transport as a service.

As this blogger covering a similar concept points out, this is kind of like a computer network in which individual packets traverse a network in a semi autonomous yet organised fashion. People will argue that a traditional car fleet and road network is exactly that, but there are lots of ways it could be improved:

• Car sharing could be greatly increased if the network knows where cars are and where they are going
  
  
• Cars 50m apart each with rubber wheels are not efficient, it would make sense at the least that cars draft each other like cyclists in the Tour de France. Or your car navigates to a train track or similar for long distance travel
  
  
• Intelligent navigation could avoid congestion and spread traffic load more efficiently than human drivers
  

What makes a good rideshare service?

We have been thinking and developing in the rideshare space for almost two years now and we think we have learnt some things.

So - what features does a compelling, successful rideshare website need to succeed? This is an important question, especially as we try and bring Cooreea to the worlds attention.

1. Easy navigation and ... maps!
   
   
2. A healthy trust system which promotes mutually beneficial interactions between users. The worst thing in the world is to be packed up and sitting at a cafe waiting for somebody who does not show (it happened to Stefan :-)
   
   
3. Some way of proving a contract has been completed, essential for the trust process and useful for exchange of money associated with giving a lift.
   
   
4. Other users! It ain't no good listing your journey if there is no on to match to

This might all seem a bit obvious, but it serves as a guide to us. We for instance do not see Gumtree rideshare listings being viable in the long run while their system does not have an adequate ID and trust system.

It also shows us what we have to do next, we have the features, we need to find users !!

Better than cars - tubes!

Wow, if this guy has his way we won't have to worry about vehicles any more, we will be swished through a tube to our next destination. Well he only intends it for packets but being packed into an underground torpedo would be fun.

This has to go in the wild and whacky file.

http://cleantechnica.com/2009/08/04/urbanmole-is-a-sewer-based-fedex/

Interesting that automated transport systems keep rearing their heads. We'd still like to see carshare with cars that drive themselves and hook together as road trains for long journeys.

Rideshare wants more reliability

Talking with people who do ridesharing as drivers I often hear the annoying fact that people who said, they are joining just don't appear at the pickup location or call 15 minutes before pickup that they changed their mind ... aarrrg.

It's even more annoying when you had 3 other people on the phone and told them the car was full already.

One solution for that problem is a "pay-in-advance" system where the driver can decide if he wants to give back the money. There are two services I know of which support this feature:

1. Cooreea - which is us - here the driver can set a cancellation date after which he is allowed to keep the money, if the co-driver cancels


2. And there just started another service for Germany: sichermitfahren which addresses exactly the same problem. The co-driver has to pay 6€ in advance and the driver is allowed to keep 5 of it if the co-driver cancels (1€ goes to the service provider)

Another solution for the problem which makes the co-driver more secure, that the driver is a reliable person is a simple rating system which allows to show a trust-value at the users profile. Since Ebay became more popular around the year 2000 I wanted the rideshare portals to have a rating system.

May the world be filled with trust and better transport systems!

Scottish Green Transport Ad

Nice ad from Scotland. The use of the song sums it up well, we used to see cars as our protection and vehicle of privacy. And now? Well...maybe we have open up a bit to new ways of doing things...

Alternatives With Air Travel Getting More Expensive

Well, with the EU and even the USA making moves to finally tax carbon - or at least force it into a market structure - things are really going to start changing in the travel market. Especially for those who have made use of the crazy cheap airfares of the last few years.

We maybe looking at the return of slow, more local, travel as suggested here - or the Internet will deliver new efficiencies around other forms of transport?

• 'True cost' transport, where the environmental cost is included in the fuel price, will result in private car travel increasing in price relative to train and other mass transit travel. Hopefully more people using these services will also result in lower prices, especially if you book far enough ahead.
  
  
• Slow travel, hitch hiking and Couch Surfing make a great combination, may return for University student summer holidays and others who are flexible with their time.
  
  
• Video conferencing will replace a growing percentage of business trips, Skype and Google Talk are bringing this to the mainstream - and for free!
  
  
• We would like to think sharing private transport will increase as Internet services offer ways for it to become more reliable. We would also like to think Cooreea will have a part to play in that revolution, bringing people together to get further cheaper.

Coolest vehicles #1

Ahhh...loving this new electric Piaggio trike...what a beauty. Hopefully they can get the price down enough to make it a staple vehicle in third world cities the world over - imagine the air quality improvements that could be made in Bangkok with a few hundred thousand of these :-)

Cambridge Systematics Report Cites Rideshare And Freight Logistics As Factor In GHG Reduction

There is a great article over at Green Car Congress about a recent study (Moving Cooler: An Analysis of Transportation Strategies for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions) on reducing transport Green House Gases.

Rideshare is mentioned as one of the corner stones of any strategy with a possible 1.7% reduction on the baseline emissions. Might not sound like much but when you think that the baseline includes all freight, passenger and lang haul transport it is meaningful.

The article also mentions intelligent transportation system (ITS) strategies, we would like to think Cooreea could offer something in this regard for moving freight and people around.

Peer to peer rideshare explosion in Germany

The thing with cool new ideas, is that you can be positive that at the time the light bulb first glowed above your head it also happened elsewhere on the planet.

In this interconnected world, this means you have a very short space of time to bring that idea to reality. Either that, or a big wallet to fund its protection.

Cooreea has been on a low fuse burn uptake now for almost a year, and was conceived nearly four years ago. So it is only natural that it is effectively launching in Germany at the peak of similar start ups. The race now, is not to show off about the originality or not of the idea - but to find real people who can find a real use for the system.

Peer to peer transport, rideshare, is exploding in Germany. Largely thanks to various systems proving over the last 10 years that the German culture actually supports the idea and has a use for it. It must also have something to do with the lowering cost of web development and people enjoying working on social applications.

As it is in Germany at the moment...

• www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de
  These guys are the incumbent free online connecting site. They have a good reputation but have failed it seems to upgrade their offering in a way you might expect - trust systems and procedures for increasing the quality of the agreements made. A big complaint is people failing to pick up passengers when agreed upon - and there be no process to change this.
  
  
• www.mitfahrzentrale.de
  A similar system but requires payment to view details.
  
  
• www.mitreisen.net
  A new kid on the block? They seem a little more event focused...we need to do some more research on that one :-)
  
  
• www.mifaz.de
  Cripes - we only just found this one...seems to be more affiliated with local regions...
  
  
• www.cooreea.com
  Us! The first to try and incorporate freighting things as well as people. And possibly the most 'Euro wide' focused

Welcome...

Welcome to our first post. This blog is the multi faceted ideas sand box for the Cooreea crew. What is Cooreea? It is a rideshare website with a difference an international team of friends (Germany and New Zealand) is tapping away - an experiment on wheels. Well actually trying to connect wheels and people on the internet with a need to change location.

You can see it in all it's glory here...

http://www.cooreea.com