Frequently Asked Questions about Carpoolable

If you have access to those services, great! Use them. However, much to the surprise of anyone born urban, such services simply do not exist anymore for rural areas. Low population density determines a lot about rural living. The economics of transit make providing nearly any rural transportation services hugely expensive. Bus service is nearly nonexistent. Uber and Lyft and taxis require high population density to even be a viable part-time job, and as a small business or side-gig, it just doesn't work rurally.

Carpoolable helps rural and rural-connected folks self-organize carpooling, whether occasionally or routinely, with folks going the same direction. A carpool cannot be a business: it's just splitting the costs of transportation. Carpoolable is not an on-call taxi service, and never will be. Carpoolable itself does not take a percentage, nor pay any drivers — the sharing of transit costs between Members is purely voluntary, and is between you two, three, or four. Because the carpool not a business for the Driver, but just shared transit, insurance coverage by anyone's normal car insurance is still in effect.

Carpoolable provides a suggested cost per kilometer (or per mile) and per Trip, and helps connect Members to make carpooling easy, convenient, and predictable. We expect all travelers — driver included — to share Trip costs. Nobody can try to make an income by driving others via Carpoolable; one can only decrease one's own travel costs. Carpoolable is designed to help enable folks from a rural region to organize their own shared transit, to save everybody money, and to decrease CO².

Today, Carpoolable is optimized for helping folks find carpoolers for longish or repeated Trips: to the Airport, or an Event, or commuting to work or school, or going to the larger town to shop. Those drivers might pick someone up along the way and drop them off along the way, but that functionality is not yet built in -- you'd have to figure it out yourself ("A to Z could include G to P -- worth asking"). We also try to name most towns in a region, but will always miss some. Use the nearest town, since we don't have street addresses in our database.

We continue to work on ways to expand the options, and if there's strong interest, we'll ramp up those capabilities fast.

Any Trip can have "Mask Required" checked; given the endemic status of respiratory ailments, and our heightened recognition of the risks of proximity, we want that request to be easy and upfront. We encourage masks be worn by all Travelers, and that there be a clear understanding from every member sharing a Carpoolable Trip. If any Traveler wants to mask, they should be supported. Any Driver can require masks in the Trip setup, and can flatly reject any passenger who refuses. As in all things human, clarity of communications is key.

Carpoolable is live, and ordinary signup is available now. Our two primary geographic Regions are Nova Scotia (carpoolable.ca) and Southern Indiana (carpoolable.com), with both live and clearly labelled Demo experiences.

Local service and trip activity vary by community. Check the public Region and demo list to see what is available near you before signing up.

Yes. It's optimized for mobile for all tasks, although creating and finding Trips is easier with a larger screen. You can use the QR code on the Login page, or on the Dashboard, to install the Carpoolable PWA on your phone, which can then allow Notifications, and enable easy contacts with others about Trips.

You don't pay Carpoolable for travel costs! Instead, you share the Trip's cost between all Travelers, including the Driver. By paying the Driver your proportion of the suggested total cost of the Trip, the costs are equally shared. The cost is currently estimated at around $0.20 per kilometer (or mile in the US); that number is set per region, and can change. We display those costs and their splits on the Trip page (we do the math!). With one Carpoolable Passenger, those Trip costs are split 50/50 with the Driver. With two or three Passengers, it's split in thirds, or in fourths. Basically, the more Travelers, the cheaper it is per Traveler, for the Driver and for each Passenger. We do the calculating for you, and you work out the payment: cash, e-transfer, or for a commute, you can just trade off driving.

You save at least half, perhaps two thirds, and even three-quarters of the direct cost of driving alone. In exchange, you may need to be a little flexible in your route and timing. The Driver has the final say on the travel and meet-up times (within reason), knowing that most Passengers could be Drivers if they needed. Once a Carpool is confirmed, contact info and calendar import becomes available, for communicating about specific plans directly. You can also use the site's communications tool to coordinate, if you want. A phone call makes arrangements easy. Note: No Driver is required to take anybody along, if they are uncomfortable for any reason. The presumption is that all parties have their own car that they could fall back on.

You also are significantly reducing the carbon costs of your Trip, by essentially saving the exhaust of the single-person travel that the other Passengers didn't take.

You save at least half, perhaps two thirds, and even three-quarters of the cost of driving yourself. In exchange, you may have to be flexible. The Driver has the final say on the travel times (within reason), knowing that most Passengers could be Drivers if they needed to be.

You also are significantly reducing the carbon costs of your travel, by essentially saving the exhaust of the car you didn't drive.

Our hope is to pay the costs of providing this service (including a salary or two) via Tips alone.

"Tips!" you may say, with derision. But actually, we think that if even small proportion our Members give us a tip of a few bucks, for an exceptional service saving them far more — then we should be able to survive financially and pay a few salaries. If not, then we may look for alternatives: Sponsors, grant funding, community funding, or other means could be possible. All have different pros and cons.

We have designed the Carpoolable sites to be (relatively) inexpensive to start up and maintain, and (relatively) easy to administer, but there are still significant costs that must be eventually recovered. Our first goal this year is to see it being used; our next goal is to see it succeed by being used repeatedly. Only then will we seek our third goal: to be sure that we are financially sustainable, so we can expand while paying for our expansion.

I'm Michael Jensen, the founder (and funder) of Carpoolable, and of other similar projects. I'm 68. I don't need or even want an IPO. I don't need or even want gigantic wealth. I want to see this idea succeed wildly, and succeed honourably. I want this project to be financially sustainable, to support other projects, pay good salaries, and pay freelancers good rates, so we can be highly effective at saving people money while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The world is burning, and this is my drop in the bucket to throw at the fire. If I'm lucky enough to succeed, I will do my level best to build a business model for this service that is equitable, ethical, sustainable, and purposeful.

And no, I won't sell your personal data. Those companies are parasites.

Carpoolable is built to help rural folks plan for shared Trips. Rarely does a rural driver decide to travel far away, on a whim. In general, for real-life activities that have carbon costs, our transit systems probably should not facilitate whims anymore anyway…

Rural trips of some distance require a little arranging, and last-minute arranging is usually the dumbest. For the kinds of rides that Carpoolable can help arrange, at least 24 hours of potential planning time is required, by default. We provide a tool to send Members a Notification and an email, and pretty quickly, you both should likely share direct contact information — especially useful for certain circumstances (like one-way Trips to or from an airport).

And honestly, if you're in a hurry, or in dire need — then go ahead and drive yourself, and plan earlier next time, to save some money and CO².

We recently integrated Commuting into the system, addressing the needs of rural-to-work commuters. The model is based on the same principle of helping people going the same direction find each other, and then help them contact each other.

Commuters, once a connection is made, can simply stay in contact, not even using Carpoolable beyond the initial contact. That said, non-commuters could occasionally join your commute Trip, saving everyone a little money, that day.

The arrangements between Driver and Riders are, as always, up to them. Carpoolable can only make recommendations. In this case, we recommend you use the same suggested "cost per kilometer/mile" model for dividing the Trip. It's just simpler that way.

Carpoolable has no absolute requirement for a car, but it's optimized for having folks meet at an agreed-upon spot (a community hall or church parking lot, a convenient corner or library), and to then continue on to a destination. Carpool drivers can't be expected to go far out of their way.; it's a balance of equals sharing the trouble and cost of the Trip. No Driver is required to accept any potential Passenger's request, and there are options: You can ask a friend to take you to the meeting spot, to meet the Driver.

That said, most people are happy to help a little, especially if it doesn't cost them much but a little time. If, as a Driver, you have time, and you're feeling neighborly and are willing to pick up a neighbor down the road, then the system has a calculator that can help you figure the cost of the extra pick-up kilometers. As always, arrangements between Driver and Passengers and payments are up to the two of you, and should be discussed and resolved ahead of time by call, text, or email.

If you pay the Driver for your portion of the Trip, the chances are good — though Yes is a choice only you (as a Driver) can make. However, it's a win-win: it saves one person the time, and saves you both CO² and money. That request ("Will you pick something up for me?") is currently not a special option built into the system. You would need to self-organize: communicate with the Driver directly through Carpoolable to start, and discuss the specifics. When you meet, to pick up the thing from the Driver, you'd pay your proportion of the Trip cost, as if you had travelled along and made the pick-up yourself. If we find this is a really desirable feature for our Members (both Driver and Passenger), we can make it even easier to make such a request within Carpoolable.

Ultimately, this is a choice the Driver needs to make. Any Driver can say "no" to any Trip request; the Driver is "in charge" of such matters. Some Drivers may not be willing to take kids, and the Passenger (and kid) should not take offense at this. Others tend to be delighted by children. We don't have any programmed system for including children. We recommend that clear discussion with a Driver ahead of time, have them decrease the number of available seats, the parent paying for both "seat shares" (since a seat is a seat), and have full disclosure in discussions ahead of time (i.e. "my nine-year-old will be with me. She's a little chatterbox, so if it's a problem let me know.").

We try (to the point of clumsy) to allow you to be in control of your data. First, we make NONE of your Carpoolable information available publicly, except for first name and intentionally mottled black & white selfie avatar, without your permission. Within Carpoolable's membership, we have a stairstep: bare-bones non-identifying info first, until both parties agree to join a Carpool. Then, you both share real contact info like email address and cellphone number.

We don't make anyone's personally identifiable information public, and we let you choose what data is shared with average Members, vs. what is shared with Members you are planning to travel with. We recommend including a reasonable amount of specifics in your public Profile (Facebook, Insta, Web page, etc.), and we enable other personal-but-not-identifying options like extra pictures.

We also can act as an intermediary-reflector for initial communications: no need to share your actual email address for initial confirmations with anyone. We provide a tool to send Notifications and emails to any Member you are in contact with, about a prospective Carpool.

But at the other end of the spectrum, we also let you choose what to share in a Contact card, that your Carpool members can import their mobile phone's contacts. We encourage you to exchange information directly with other Members, once a Carpoolable Trip has been planned. We provide tools to help Members do that.

We do not sell or rent your personal data, activities, or images. We use a limited number of service providers to operate Carpoolable—for example, to deliver email, process Tips, and store uploaded media. We share with them only the information needed to provide those services.

The balance between privacy and safety is complicated.

Carpoolable does not store your card number, PIN, or security code. Tips are processed by Stripe. If our Members are generous, we retain limited "tip" records --such as the amount, currency, status, and Stripe transaction reference -- so we can process and receive those payments. No street addresses are recorded, and no CC/PIN/SIN/SSN numbers ever saved on our Carpoolable servers. This radically decreases the attractiveness of our information and service to hackers, identity thieves, or data robots. We of course take prudent care of our systems, but AI makes security complicated.

We also need you to be able to trust other Carpoolable Members, who are essentially strangers to you. To help that, we require that the system hold certain level of personal information, which a Member can choose to share, in what contexts, with other Members.

The most seemingly-invasive part of that is requiring the "AnonID." We try to auto-identify numbers and black them out, and provide you a tool to black out any info that make you nervous. This approach allows other Members to see that you're legitimate, but without as much risk to you. Note the sample of Founder Michael Jensen's Photo ID: it has a photo, a signature, and evidence that he lives in Nova Scotia. We also require a real Selfie, a "Car Selfie" ideally with license plate, your cell number, and your email address -- but YOU decide which of those is displayed to other Members generally, or only to Members you are in contact with about an upcoming Carpool.

Your "Public Profile" should be as open as you are willing to be -- and as you would want others to be. Initial contact is through Carpoolable, and then we assume you will communicate mostly through text and email, on your own. But please, stay engaged with Carpoolable enough to take advantage of the system's Contact import tools, Calendar updates, and our "Trip Pix" and "Cheese-able" tools, and other things that make Carpoolable helpful as well as safer.

Until it becomes necessary, we are finding that search actually wastes more time than it helps, in Carpoolable. So far, good filters on dates and locales, and "hometown" constraints, and visual cues, provide the best approach to identifying Trips that you might want to join.

Currently there is none. If Carpoolable becomes a rollicking success, then it makes sense, but right now the business model is to sadly shake our heads and say "we will respond as soon as we are able." As a new free site that has no business model (beyond tips for saving you money), we cannot afford direct tech support. And we refuse to use shitty AI chatbots to "answer" tech support questions.

However, we very much need to hear from you. We want to make this the best tool possible for helping save everyone money, and save CO2. We want to grow and become a rollicking success!

The Demo site, as well as Membership sites, has a side link that's linked to a feedback form. This lets you type in what you're experiencing. We might be able to get back to you. Although we've spent 18+ months building it, Carpoolable is new -- and so we expect hiccups. Please let us know what you find!

Unless otherwise arranged, we recommend that Rider #1 sits in the front passenger seat, Rider #2 sits behind the front passenger seat, and Rider #3 sits behind the Driver. But really, it's up to you.