Carpooling is when people share a car trip so that more than one person travels in the same vehicle. This means others do not need to drive separately to the same place. Carpooling is a type of transportation service that responds to people's needs.

When more people use one car, each person spends less on travel costs, such as fuel, tolls, and the stress of driving. Carpooling also helps the environment by reducing air pollution, carbon emissions, traffic congestion, and the need for parking spaces. Government officials often support carpooling during times when pollution is high or fuel prices are expensive. Sharing a car helps use all the seats in a vehicle, which might otherwise go unused if only one person is driving.

In 2009, carpooling made up 43.5% of all trips in the United States and 10% of trips people took to work. More than 60% of carpool trips involved family members.

Carpooling is more common among people who live in areas with many jobs nearby and in places where more people live close together. Carpooling is connected to transportation costs, such as fuel prices and how far people travel, and to social factors, like time spent with others, eating, drinking, and being unmarried. However, carpooling is less common among people who work long hours, older individuals, and people who own homes.

Operation

Drivers and passengers use different ways to offer and find trips. Once a match is found, they contact each other to plan details like cost, meeting places, and space for luggage. They then meet and travel together as planned.

Carpooling is often used for daily commutes but is becoming more common for longer, one-time trips. The rules and regularity of these arrangements can differ depending on the group or trip.

Carpooling does not always cover the full trip. On long journeys, passengers may join for only part of the trip and pay based on the distance they travel. This makes carpooling more flexible and helps more people share trips and save money.

Some carpooling is now organized through online platforms or ride-matching websites. These sites help drivers and passengers find matches and may allow secure payments for shared travel costs. Like other online services, they use user ratings to build trust and improve the experience for users.

Carpooling arrangements can be made through many methods, such as public websites, social media, employer sites, smartphone apps, carpooling agencies, and pickup locations.

Initiatives

Many companies and local governments have started programs to help people share rides in cars.

To reduce traffic and encourage carpooling, some governments have created special lanes called high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. These lanes are only for vehicles with two or more passengers. HOV lanes can help people save time and money by making carpooling faster and more convenient. In some countries, parking spaces are set aside for carpoolers.

In 2011, an organization named Greenxc launched a campaign to encourage people to use carpooling to lower their carbon footprint.

Carpooling, also known as car sharing in British English, is supported by a UK charity called Carplus. Carplus works to promote responsible car use and reduce the financial, environmental, and social costs of driving. The charity is backed by Transport for London, a government program aimed at reducing traffic, parking problems, and air pollution in the city.

However, some countries do not support carpooling. In Hungary, it is illegal to carry someone in a car for a shared cost unless the driver has a taxi license and provides an invoice with taxes paid. In 2011, undercover tax officers fined several people during a crackdown by pretending to be passengers looking for rides on carpooling websites. On March 19, 2012, Endre Spaller, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, asked Zoltán Cséfalvay, the Secretary of State for the National Economy, about this practice. Cséfalvay responded that carpooling should be encouraged instead of punished, but he also warned that care must be taken to prevent people from using carpooling to avoid paying taxes.

Cost sharing

Carpooling means splitting the cost of a trip equally among everyone in the vehicle, including the driver and passengers. The driver does not charge money for the ride but shares the cost of the trip with others. The main costs to split are fuel and tolls. If other costs, like the cost of buying and fixing the car, insurance, and taxes, are also included, the total cost is about $1 for every mile driven. Some websites and apps help people find drivers and passengers who want to share a ride. Usually, the driver sets a price, and passengers agree to pay that amount before the trip starts.

A newer type of these platforms helps manage carpooling in cities by using smartphones. These platforms allow drivers to pick up passengers in empty seats during a trip, even if the passengers are not going to the same starting or ending points. This system automatically divides the cost of the trip fairly. Each passenger pays the driver an amount that depends on how far they traveled and how many people were in the car during the trip.

History

Carpooling became important in the United States during World War II as a way to save resources. People shared rides through "car clubs" or "car-sharing clubs." The US Office of Civilian Defense asked neighborhood groups to help four workers share a car to save rubber for the war. They also started a program called the Car Sharing Club Exchange and Self-Dispatching System. Carpooling returned in the mid-1970s because of the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis. At that time, the first employee vanpools were created at Chrysler and 3M.

Carpooling dropped quickly between the 1970s and 2000s. In 1970, 20.4% of people used carpooling for commuting. By 2011, this number had fallen to 9.7%. This decline was mainly because gas prices dropped by 45% in the 1980s. In the 1990s, carpooling became popular among college students because many campuses had limited parking. Prof. James Davidson from Harvard, along with Dace Campbell, Ivan Lin, Habib Rached from Washington, and others, studied how to improve carpooling. At that time, the technology needed was not yet available for use. Their work helped lead to later carpooling and ridesharing systems, such as those used by Garrett Camp, Travis Kalanick, Oscar Salazar, and Conrad Whelan at Uber.

Carpooling has changed over time. It moved from a style where each rider was picked up one by one, called the "Dagwood Bumstead" type, to a style where all travelers meet at a common place, called "park and ride." In 2005, the percentage of people using carpooling for commuting grew to 10.7%. In 2007, smartphones and GPS became available, and John Zimmer from Cornell University and Logan Green from the University of California, Santa Barbara, created a carpooling system called Zimride, which was an early version of Lyft. The rise of the Internet and smartphones helped carpooling grow, making it easier for people to find and offer rides through online services. These websites are often used for one-time long-distance trips with high fuel costs.

In Europe, long-distance carpooling has become more popular in recent years because of BlaBlaCar. According to its website, as of 2020, BlaBlaCar had more than 80 million users across Europe and other regions.

As of March 2020, Uber and Lyft stopped their carpooling services in the United States and Canada to help control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic through social distancing.

Other forms

Carpooling can take different forms:

• Slugging is a type of informal carpooling between strangers. No money is exchanged, but both the driver and passengers benefit from the arrangement.
• Flexible carpooling allows people to join carpools at set locations, making the process more organized than casual arrangements.
• Ridesharing companies use smartphone apps or the internet to connect drivers and passengers quickly. Passengers are picked up at their current location without prior planning.
• Carpool lines function like bus routes, with set stops for passengers to board. This is different from High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, which only give priority to vehicles with multiple occupants but do not provide organized matching or fixed stops.

In some European countries, such as France and Switzerland, structured carpooling networks (also called carpool lines or organized carpooling) have been created to support public transportation. Unlike traditional carpooling, which depends on prearranged plans or digital matching, these systems use fixed routes and stops, similar to buses. Their goals include:
• Reducing the number of cars with only one driver;
• Offering transportation options in areas outside city centers and rural regions where public transit is limited.

Challenges

• Flexibility – Carpooling can be difficult to adjust if people need to stop at different places or change their work schedules. A survey found this was the most common reason people did not carpool. To help with this, some programs offer "sweeper services" that run later in the day or provide a "guaranteed ride home" with a local taxi company.
• Reliability – If a carpooling network does not have enough people joining, it may be hard to find someone to share a ride for certain trips. Sometimes, people who agree to a ride may not show up. Some online carpooling services solve this by charging passengers in advance, even if they cancel last minute.
• Riding with strangers – Many people worry about safety when sharing a ride with people they do not know. However, the chance of crime is very low. Some online carpooling services use systems that track users’ behavior and help people build trust, which makes the service safer and more useful for everyone.
• Overall effectiveness – Although most governments support carpooling, including building special lanes for carpoolers, some people question how well these lanes work. For example, many carpool lanes are often empty during busy times. This can cause traffic problems, as solo drivers may slow down and use more fuel.
• In 2012, the Queensland government decided to stop using carpool lanes (called Transit Lanes) because they believed the lanes caused traffic delays. This decision was supported by the RACQ motoring group.
• No carpooling service lets drivers set a time range for when they are available in advance. Most carpooling services use mobile apps, but some services for long-distance travel between cities (like Ride Joy and Autostrade carpooling) do not. Also, no carpooling service guarantees a minimum delay for drivers or a single pickup/dropoff point. Some platforms, such as TwoGo and BlaBlaLines (operated by BlaBlaCar), use smart technology to match users with the best possible rides. This technology considers real-time traffic data to plan accurate routes and arrival times.

In popular culture

• In the 1970s, the US Department of Transportation created a funny, animated public service announcement called "Kalaka" to encourage people to carpool. In the video, an interviewer speaks with Noah, who is described as "the original share-the-ride-with-a-friend man." Noah explains that carpooling is a cost-effective way to travel, but people called it "kalaka" back then.
• Cabbing All the Way is a book written by Jatin Kuberkar that tells the story of a successful carpool with twelve people traveling together. Set in Hyderabad, India, the book is based on real events and shows how carpooling can be helpful.
• The 2017 smartphone game Crazy Taxi Tycoon (previously called Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire) portrays ride-sharing as a danger to the taxi industry. In the game, players work to build a taxi service that is more honest, friendly, and dependable than the powerful, unfair megacorporation shown in the story.
• Carpool Karaoke is a regular segment on The Late Late Show with James Corden.