Self-organized transportation sharing
built on a benign platform.
built on a benign platform.
About Carpoolable
Carpoolable is just a tool, but it might be revolutionary.
It's a tool to help (mostly rural) folks self-organize their own carpooling, in order to save money and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Carpoolable takes advantage of the fact that we now nearly all have cell phones, and it presumes that we're all grownups who can make plans together, even if we're almost strangers. Carpoolable also helps folks control how they share their personal info: their selfies, their proof of identity, and their contact information, to help build trust.
It's "possibly revolutionary" because its business model is based on sharing costs, not squeezing profits. Carpoolable is designed on a bare-bones architecture, so that its mission can be maximal utility, not maximal profit.
Carpoolable has been on a slow burner for years, in different forms. I'm Michael Jensen. I've run digital projects since the late 1980s. When I moved from Washington DC to a rural Nova Scotia farm, the limits of rural transportation became very clear: there are virtually no public transit options, nor an infrastructure to support it, and private taxis are rare, expensive, and usually sadly short-lived businesses.
I made a few different stabs at building "rural carpooling" sites, and learned a lot. Now, with both the oil crisis and the climate crisis, this project seemed particularly timely. I've shifted my development focus almost entirely to this project, applying modern AI tools to make Carpoolable a regional reality.
Early on in my Internet years I learned that the "business model" of a project usually determines its destiny. Carpoolable uses a very different business model than that of Uber, or Facebook, or most other Internet companies. As I describe in the FAQ and elsewhere, the goal for Carpoolable is NOT to monetize your data by capturing your information. It is NOT to profit off of your efforts, or catering to angel investors ahead of an IPO. Instead, Carpoolable is designed to be a small, benign and sustainable platform -- more in the spirit of Craigslist or Wikipedia, than in a Lyft or a Facebook or AirBnB. Carpoolable just puts people together, and then gets out of their way. Later, if you want to tip us, great.
We don't lock you in to any service, or require that you communicate exclusively via Carpoolable. Instead, after interacting through Carpoolable, we encourage you to communicate directly with your fellow-travelers via normal text, email, or phone, to establish trust and make schedule plans.
At first, our focus for Carpoolable is on long regional Trips: going to Airports, and Commuting, and Events, and named Destinations. Once we've worked out kinks in those systems, we can expand and enhance the capabilities to include much smaller trips (like for groceries), partial trips, and special destinations (like Health Care facilities, or soccer practices). We want folks to self-organize and find each other, via Carpoolable, because it works.
We know Carpoolable won't fit everyone's needs, but it may make a difference for many. If you and others find this approach compelling, and share with your friends, then Carpoolable will be able to expand pretty painlessly, and hopefully usefully, to become a dependable tool for our province, and beyond!
Michael Jon Jensen
Founder, Carpoolable
michaeljonjensen.com
mwmwm.com
It's a tool to help (mostly rural) folks self-organize their own carpooling, in order to save money and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Carpoolable takes advantage of the fact that we now nearly all have cell phones, and it presumes that we're all grownups who can make plans together, even if we're almost strangers. Carpoolable also helps folks control how they share their personal info: their selfies, their proof of identity, and their contact information, to help build trust.
It's "possibly revolutionary" because its business model is based on sharing costs, not squeezing profits. Carpoolable is designed on a bare-bones architecture, so that its mission can be maximal utility, not maximal profit.
Carpoolable has been on a slow burner for years, in different forms. I'm Michael Jensen. I've run digital projects since the late 1980s. When I moved from Washington DC to a rural Nova Scotia farm, the limits of rural transportation became very clear: there are virtually no public transit options, nor an infrastructure to support it, and private taxis are rare, expensive, and usually sadly short-lived businesses.
I made a few different stabs at building "rural carpooling" sites, and learned a lot. Now, with both the oil crisis and the climate crisis, this project seemed particularly timely. I've shifted my development focus almost entirely to this project, applying modern AI tools to make Carpoolable a regional reality.
Early on in my Internet years I learned that the "business model" of a project usually determines its destiny. Carpoolable uses a very different business model than that of Uber, or Facebook, or most other Internet companies. As I describe in the FAQ and elsewhere, the goal for Carpoolable is NOT to monetize your data by capturing your information. It is NOT to profit off of your efforts, or catering to angel investors ahead of an IPO. Instead, Carpoolable is designed to be a small, benign and sustainable platform -- more in the spirit of Craigslist or Wikipedia, than in a Lyft or a Facebook or AirBnB. Carpoolable just puts people together, and then gets out of their way. Later, if you want to tip us, great.
We don't lock you in to any service, or require that you communicate exclusively via Carpoolable. Instead, after interacting through Carpoolable, we encourage you to communicate directly with your fellow-travelers via normal text, email, or phone, to establish trust and make schedule plans.
At first, our focus for Carpoolable is on long regional Trips: going to Airports, and Commuting, and Events, and named Destinations. Once we've worked out kinks in those systems, we can expand and enhance the capabilities to include much smaller trips (like for groceries), partial trips, and special destinations (like Health Care facilities, or soccer practices). We want folks to self-organize and find each other, via Carpoolable, because it works.
We know Carpoolable won't fit everyone's needs, but it may make a difference for many. If you and others find this approach compelling, and share with your friends, then Carpoolable will be able to expand pretty painlessly, and hopefully usefully, to become a dependable tool for our province, and beyond!
Michael Jon Jensen
Founder, Carpoolable
michaeljonjensen.com
mwmwm.com