Margaret Mahan – the new Executive Director of BEST – and I were just discussing over lunch how the auto-dominated design of the post-war city will likely change in an age of peak oil and climate change. Clearly, people will not give up their cars if they don’t have options. So how do we give them options?
Sightline’s Daily Score just reported on Goose – an ingenious mix of carpooling, ride-sharing and transit all facilitated by the cellular phone, the web and text messaging. For instance:
Goose Networks’ first-of-its-kind ‘real-time ridesharing’ (RTR) service leverages the ubiquity of cell phones to allow users to find ridesharing partners in real-time via a simple text message interface. Using their existing cell-phone, GOOSE users need only send a short text message to GOOSE (46673) saying where they’re headed and whether they want to ride or drive. From there, our servers automatically identify trusted rideshare partners who are headed in the same direction and create rideshare pairings in real-time.
Not quite ready for prime time around here – but it won’t likely be long.
