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