The Playbook for Successful Modern Carpooling

We are all aware that the sharing economy is one of the fastest growing business and technology trends of the last century. We have crowdfunding, co-working, house renting, ride sharing, car sharing and much more. Carpooling is one such shared business model. However, although carpooling offers many benefits to the individual user and on a larger organizational scale, it has not been as successful. Why? A lack of uptake.

In our latest playbook, we explore the place of carpooling in modern society, it’s obvious (and not so obvious) benefits and the correct way to successfully implement a carpool service. We collaborated with Liftango for their expertise in carpooling technology, PayByPhone for their experience with parking technology and we contributed our market research and shared mobility expertise to create a paper founded in research and real life examples. Keep reading for a sneak peak of what to expect in our latest playbook.

The Benefits of Carpooling

Without a doubt, breaking individual commuter habits is a massive challenge. However, whether you call it carpooling, co-riding, or ridesharing, sharing your commute with friends or colleagues will save you money, increase your well being and productivity and help the environment.

Did you know:

• CONGESTION: If everyone in the USA chose to carpool just 1 day a week, traffic could be reduced by 20%!
• COST: By commuting every working day for a month with just one other person you could save up to $50 (or more!)
• SOCIAL: Every 10 minutes of solitary commuting results in 10% fewer social connections.

This is just the tip of the ice berg. In our latest carpooling playbook, we discuss in detail how much money you could save on an individual and organizational level, the stats on how carpooling decreases both congestion and carbon emissions and how it increases daily levels of productivity.

HOW TO CREATE a SUCCESSFUL CARPOOLING service

Carpooling can be difficult to implement but it doesn’t have to be a impossible. However, you have to get a few things right: the technology, a carpooling strategy (that includes incentives) and a proper communication strategy.

Using reliable, safe, easy to use technology that will dynamically match drivers with riders within communities or organizations is essential to the success of your carpool scheme. Once the technology is in place, it is imperative that you create a carpooling strategy that will allow you to generate new users and to keep existing ones. To do this, it is important that you create incentives and clear communication strategy that will educate potential (and current) users on the benefits of carpooling.

In our latest playbook, using a case study and a real world example, we examine the major themes required for successful implementation of a carpool scheme and just how exactly you can encourage users to get on board.

Topics we explore include:

• Trust, Safety & Reliability: Reliability plays a huge factor when encouraging people to adopt carpooling. Without a reliable service, people will stay in their own vehicles and not make the jump. One of the biggest advantages of introducing modern technology is the ability to provide a more reliable service to users. However, if the riders and drivers have no trust in the app itself or if they feel worried about their personal safety, then it will be impossible to create an uptake in the service. In our playbook, we take a look at what you can do to provide a safe, reliable and trusted service for your users.
• Convenience: We conduct surveys of shared mobility users on a regular basis and the number one reason people switch to a new form of mobility is because of it’s ease of use and if it fits into their lifestyles. The technology needs to be easy to use, there needs to be clear communication about pick ups and drop offs and this all needs to be in real-time with the appropriate integrated GPS technology.
• Parking: By promoting carpooling and rightsizing parking within your organization you can increase the utilization of parking stalls. Where perhaps previously every stall was used by one employee a day, smart technology solutions can be utilized to rent those stalls to multiple users every day.
• Affordability & Incentives: In our surveys we also noted that people shift behaviour only if it is more affordable than their current option. Anything that leaves more money in the pocket of the user creates an incentive to change how people get around. Creating incentives such as partnerships with local businesses that will provide discounts on fuel, park-ing, and maintenance to reduce costs for drivers is one idea. To learn about more incentives you can implement into your organization, check out our playbook.
• Gamification: Using gamification can help to promote program participation and employee
  engagement. Awards from the company such as “carpooler of the month” are great ways to engage your staff. Gamification alone will not convert people to carpooling but it is a feature that will make them active users in the long run.

This playbook will show how your organization can enjoy these benefits by explaining how to make carpooling a success from the start. But – it’s not as easy as just providing the service and the tech to back it up. Changing commuters existing habits requires strong incentives, motivators and the collaboration between technology providers and employers.

Get your copy of our latest playbook today and let us help you solve these issues and more!